The Ghana national football team is one of the major powers on the African Continent. Ghana won the African Cup of Nations four times and finished second four times as well.
The team participated in the World Cup only twice and that’s surprising because it was the Gold Coast that introduced football to the African Continent.
The Ghana national team was founded in 1957. In 1960 they played against the top selection of the best European team of that time, Real Madrid, and ended the game in a draw. After that game an attacker Charles Kumi Gyamfi was invited to play for a German club Fortuna Dusseldorf becoming one of the first African players to move to Europe.
The team was nicknamed ‘the African Brazilians’ and in 1963 they won the title of the strongest African team.
Nevertheless Ghana couldn’t make it to the final of the World Cup even with the help of the strongest head coaches such as Alberto Parreira and Otto Pfister. It was in 2006 when the team finally managed to play in the World Cup in Germany where they showed decent performance. The team lost to Italians 0-2 and then the Black Stars defeated the Czech Republic 2-0 and the USA 2-1, then in 1/8 final the squad was defeated by Brazil 0-3. The Serbian Ratomir Dujkovic was at the helm of the team. Despite that success he left the team after the tournament to prepare Chinese team for the Olympic Games.
During the spell of Milovan Rajevac the team finished first in its qualification group for the World Cup and was runner-up in the African Cup of Nations. Ghana celebrated their major success at the World Cup reaching quarterfinal stage, losing to Uruguay on penalties. Thereby Ghana became the third African team to reach the quarterfinal of the World Cup.
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