Sports
Jordan revives Ghana’s World Cup bid — and bears the Ayew torch in Andre’s absence
Given how the Black Stars’ previous competitive game — against Mozambique at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) earlier this year — ended, one could pardon Ghanaians for developing PTSD about late goals scored in matches involving the senior national team.
That pair of strikes saw the West Africans eliminated at the first round of the tournament — in back-to-back editions — despite the game itself ending in a draw, throwing the entire nation into mourning and sparking a national soul-searching exercise that has not quite reached a conclusion.
On Thursday night, however, it was the Black Stars chasing a game, desperate for a late goal to win their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifier away to Mali, after complicating things for themselves with a defeat to lowly Comoros — the second in less than two years — in November 2023.
The Eagles have been something of a bogey side for Ghana in recent memory, winning half of the last six meetings and losing just twice. At the aforementioned AFCON, they outperformed Ghana, only edged out in the quarter-finals by hosts and eventual champions Ivory Coast in a tense encounter — but not by much.
With four points from their opening two games, Mali were also better than Ghana — even if slightly — thus far in World Cup qualifying. To their advantage, too, was the stability and continuity achieved in these two years under trainer Eric Chelle; his opposite number, Otto Addo, has had two stints some 15 months apart, returning to post only in March.
That was the magnitude of the challenge against which Addo led a team that had won just one of its last ten games, and none of the previous seven. On foreign soil, Ghana’s most recent triumph came during Addo’s first tenure, in a nervy fixture against South Korea, at the 2022 World Cup.
Suffice to say, then, that hopes were not very high about the Black Stars getting a result that would take them a step closer to the Mundial that comes off two years from now in the USA/Canada/Mexico. And the overall performance on the evening may well have sent Ghana home with nothing.
Mali were, by some distance, the dominant team, and were rewarded for their efforts just before the break with the opener, albeit fortuitously. Kamory Doumbia’s effort inside the Ghanaian box ricocheted off an opponent, then off Doumbia himself, before bouncing past Ghana goalkeeper Lawrence Ati-Zigi.
Olympique Lyon’s Ernest Nuamah got Ghana level just before the hour mark, connecting powerfully with a sweetly curled cross from fellow France-based star Salis Abdul Samed, but that came well against the run of play. The hosts, buoyed on by an intensely partisan crowd, still looked the likelier side to win. When defensive midfielder Elisha Owusu later replaced the goalscorer, it felt like Addo was settling for a draw.
The former Borussia Dortmund player/coach waited 72 minutes to make that first substitution, but he had completely exhausted his options by the time the game ended.
It was one of those late entrants, Jordan Ayew, who would turn the game on its head and snatch an unlikely yet precious result for the Black Stars. Not many Ghanaians would have counted on the Crystal Palace forward as the man to provide the decisive moment, given how infrequently he scores and how unproductive he is perceived to be.
Then there is the fact that the surname Ayew doesn’t quite excite the Ghanaian fan now as it did in the nineties, when Jordan’s father and — to a lesser extent — uncles were reckoned as national football icons.
Despite having both entered triple figures in international caps, the more prominent scions of the Ayew stock, Andre and Jordan, have never really succeeded in endearing themselves to Ghanaians. The former’s status as the team’s skipper didn’t save him from the cheers that greeted his omission from Addo’s squad for the latest assignments, and the least the latter could endure, many argued, was a place on the bench in Bamako.
But Jordan has actually been Ghana’s most impactful attacker thus far this year; he has scored in the team’s last three games, including both goals in that ill-fated match with Mozambique. And he picked up where he left off after coming on, going about his business very purposefully, with his first meaningful contribution coming in added time.
Picking up the ball around the middle of the park, Jordan went on that sort of run of his which often ends with Ghanaians rolling their eyes in frustration, but, this time, he finished it by slipping through stand-in captain Thomas Partey. The Arsenal midfielder, however, failed to win the ensuing one-on-one with goalkeeper Mamadou Samassa, bringing Ayew’s earnest exertions to naught.
So when Jordan pounced on a loose ball following a goal-mouth melee mere minutes later, he decided to take matters into his own hands, putting it away with ease — for his first Ghana goal from open play since netting in a September 2023 friendly against Liberia — to secure the win.
Jordan, so often the villain (fairly or otherwise), had turned hero here, with his last-gasp strike bringing Ghana up to six points — joint with leaders Comoros for at least a day — and setting Addo’s team up to potentially claim top spot outright in Group I with a home victory over the Central African Republic on June 10.
A point would be almost guaranteed at the Baba Yara Stadium, where the Black Stars have not lost a game since the turn of the century, and all three would be deemed collectable. And while the football itself needs to improve going forward, North America doesn’t seem so distant a destination anymore.
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