<\/p>\n
Okraku handing over a Black Stars jersey to Ex-President Kufuor<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Black Stars have received a father\u2019s blessings from former President, John Agyekum Kufuor, ahead of this year\u2019s World Cup in Qatar.<\/p>\n The Stars go into the forthcoming FIFA World Cup with positive pronouncements from the statesman under whose watch Ghana picked their first ever World Cup ticket when Germany hosted the event in 2006.<\/p>\n And attributing what accounted for their impressive showing, he zeroed in on players\u2019 physical fitness.<\/p>\n Sixteen years ago, the Black Stars qualified from a group that housed Italy, United States of America, and the Czech Republic. They defeated Czech, who were ranked second at the time, 2-0, before beating the USA 2-1 to secure qualification to the round of 16.<\/p>\n The Black Stars\u00a0 will make their fourth appearance in Qatar this year, and officials from the Ghana Football Association(GFA) led by President Kurt Okraku, met with former President Kufuor ahead of the tournament.<\/p>\n The former President said, \u201cWe must be physically strong at the World Cup because in 2006, the Black Stars performed better because of the strength of the team, you look at the captain, Stephen Appiah and then characters like Sulley Muntari, you can\u2019t just push Sulley down. The Asamoah Gyan\u2019s, and the Essien\u2019s were physically fit.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cSo, one thing I pray you would ensure is that they go to the pitch physically fit to battle with other countries. We shouldn\u2019t be walkovers, so we must be strong, smart and have stamina towards goal, we must work as a team, single purpose team to hit into the post.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you do that I\u2019m sure you will come away with flying colours. So, you have all my blessings, and prayers. I pray that it shouldn\u2019t be only the first round, they should continue to the quarter and semi-finals. The nation awaits good news from the team.\u201d<\/p>\n Ghana are pitted against Portugal, South Korea and Uruguay at the group stage.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n By Kofi Owusu Aduonum<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okraku handing over a Black Stars jersey to Ex-President Kufuor \u00a0 The Black Stars have received a father\u2019s blessings from former President, John Agyekum Kufuor, ahead of this year\u2019s World Cup in Qatar. The Stars go into the forthcoming FIFA World Cup with positive pronouncements from the statesman under whose watch Ghana picked their first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1236121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[94,10080,6407,95],"class_list":["post-1236119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-black","tag-blesses","tag-kufuor","tag-stars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}