{"id":1254869,"date":"2022-11-21T11:11:25","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T11:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/11\/21\/world-cup-off-to-flying-start\/"},"modified":"2022-11-21T11:11:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T11:11:25","slug":"world-cup-off-to-flying-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/11\/21\/world-cup-off-to-flying-start\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup Off To Flying Start!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 2022 World Cup month-long festival of football, packed with drama and excitement got off to a flying start yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, it was preceded by a spectacular well-rehearsed opening ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hosts, Qatar set the tone of the competition with their South American counterparts Equador, but results was not available at press time.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In all, 32 teams will battle for supremacy in a competition which injury has robbed fans of stars like reigning Balon d\u2019or winner Karim Benzema, Ngolo Kante, Paul Pogba, Sadio Mane and Ghana\u2019s first choice goalkeepers \u2013 Richard Ofori, Jojo Wolacot, among others.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s edition, the first ever in the Middle East, taking into account the battle readiness of the combatants.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Black Stars will begin their campaign this Thursday when they cross swords with Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s Portugal.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly, the 2-0 thumping of Switzerland coupled with the desire to avenge the Brazil 2014 World Cup defeat has raised the stakes.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>By Kofi Owusu Aduonum<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!-- AI CONTENT END 2 -->\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 The 2022 World Cup month-long festival of football, packed with drama and excitement got off to a flying start yesterday. As usual, it was preceded by a spectacular well-rehearsed opening ceremony. \u00a0 Hosts, Qatar set the tone of the competition with their South American counterparts Equador, but results was not available at press time. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1254873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[262,5365,2027,784],"class_list":["post-1254869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cup","tag-flying","tag-start","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254869","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=1254869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1254869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1254869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1254869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}