AfricaPress-Tanzania: NGORONGORO Heroes coach Jamhuri Kihwelo said his side still has a big chance to reach into the quarterfinals of the ongoing Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) finals in Mauritania. The country’s envoys suffered a 4-0 setback in their opening match against Ghana on Tuesday night meaning that the Heroes must win against Gambia in their next match to reignite chances of sailing through.
Up next, Ngorongoro Heroes take on Gambia tomorrow before winding up their group C campaign against Morocco on Monday next week whereby the two best teams will progress into the next chapter.
“Even though we have lost the match, I am satisfied to see that my players have known their mistakes and together, we will correct them prior to our next two matches. “To be honest, the loss did not mean that Ghana were better than us because even if you can look at statistics after the game, we were above them in everything. The only difference was that they positively used our mistakes,” he said.
He added that Ghana have vast experience in the competition and have won it several times as such, whenever you make mistakes, they do not hesitate to punish you.
“What I can say is that we are in the midst of the battle as such, we have to fight hard to make sure that we win two of the remaining encounters to create a good path to reach at the promised land,” Kihwelo said.
He then declined to blame any of his charges for the poor results insisting that they lost as a team and should work hard as a team to stamp success in upcoming duels.
“The entire team is responsible for the defeat and we have lost against a good side in the continent but all in all, I do not want to give Ghana much credit because we too played well than them. “We will resolve all the mistakes which transpired so that we have an opportunity to outclass Gambia in the next game. You cannot compare Ghana with Gambia and Morocco because Ghana are much better than the other two sides,” he narrated.
It took only two minutes for Ghana to score the leading goal on the day and two of the goals they netted in the first half were heavily linked with poor goalkeeping performance from Heroes custodian Daniel Mgore.
The second goal was rather a more disappointing from a goalkeeper of his caliber as he was easily beat from a long range strike which was struck almost from the centre circle of the pitch.
