South Africa vs Ghana: Predicted line up, head-to-head and preview

South Africa’s Bafana Bafana will lock horns with the Black Stars of Ghana today at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Both sides will be focused on coming out on top in a tie that could potentially decide who leads the group at the end of the group stage qualifiers, though there are still four rounds of matches after today.

As if their meeting is nature-ordained, the two sides have faced off in competitive fixtures already this year in AFCON qualifiers where today’s visitors had the best laugh with a qualification ahead of the Bafana Bafana. What a perfect opportunity to exact revenge, that is what the South African fans would desire and wish for from their national pride. And Ghanaians on the other hand would trade their place in Cameroon 2022 for Qatar 2022 if they cannot make it out of the group and are allowed to swap places.

It would be unacceptable for the Black Stars to miss consecutive World Cup tournaments having made three straight appearances since their debut in Germany in 2006. A 2018 failure to advance, falling at the last hurdle to Egypt is still a pain in the hearts of many though at the time many fans were still angered by the lacklustre show at Brazil 2014.

Previous matches them and who is ahead?

South Africa and Ghana are not strangers in competitive matches and played several high profile matches between them aside from the recent AFCON qualification meetings in Group C where Ghana took 4 points out of the available six over two legs.

The two nations have met on 14 different occasions with each side winning four and the remaining six being draws. However, in competitive matches, that is matches excluding friendlies, they have met eight times with two of them being World Cup qualifiers.

In those competitive fixtures which also exclude invitational tournaments such as the Simba Cup and the South African tournament, Ghana won four of them scoring at least two goals. They lost two; 3 – 0 and 0 – 1 defeats suffered at AFCOn 1996 and 2000 respectively. The two draws between them in competitive fixtures came in the last match between them in an AFCON qualifier in March this year which ended 1 – 1 and a goalless stalemate in AFCON 2002.

The last time both sides were in a World Cup qualifying group, the Black Stars triumphed with a 5 – 0 aggregate win while conceding no goals. They went on to make their World Cup debut in 2006 following the triumph over the Bafana Bafana in 2004/05.

Since a one-nil defeat in August 2010 in an international friendly, Ghana is yet to lose a match against South Africa. winning two and drawing three of the five matches played. The Black Stars have scored six goals and conceded three against the Bafana Bafana and both sides failed to score in only one match played between them since then with that coming in an international friendly played in 2019.

Start to World Cup Qualification

Both sides kicked off their Qatar 2022 World Cup campaign last week Friday but with contrasting fortunes after 90 minutes. Whereas South Africa was held to a goalless draw at the Zimbabwe National Stadium in Harare, the Black Stars laboured to a one-goal victory over Ethiopia at Cape Coast. The result at the end of today would then have a telling impact on the table if there is a victory. A win for Ghana would set them as outright leaders of the group and a win for South Africa would also send them to the summit with a point difference.

Who to start for Ghana?

Ghana’s Coach, CK Akonnor will have limited options available to make in naming his starting XI, worse than he had in Friday’s encounter. Six of the players who started in the previous game are unavailable. Crystal Palace duo od Jeffrey Shclupp and Jordan Ayew alongside Daniel Amartey of Leicester City and Baba Abdul Rahman and Andy Yiadom both of Reading FC will all miss today’s match due to UK Covid-19 restrictions. Of the five, only Schlupp could not complete the previous game after going off injured in the first half.

France-based Kamaldeen Sulemana has also been recalled by Rennes though he started the game for Ghana. It does not end there as St. Pauli star, Daniel-Kofi Kyere who replaced Schlupp in the first half in his debut game for the Stars will also miss today’s game having being recalled by his club.

We expect Akonnor to make the following changes to his lineup to face South Africa.

Predicted Starting XI: Richard Ofori, Gideon Mensah, Fatawu Mohammed, Alexander Djiku, Jonathan Mensah, Mubarak Wakaso, Baba Iddrisu, yaw Yeboah, Andre Ayew, Emmanuel Gyasi, Daniel Afriyie Barnieh.

Let us know what your predicted lineup is by leaving a comment below.

By: Clifford Adumbire | myactiveonline.com

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