Ghana's Black Meteors’ quest to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games begins this Friday when they face Cameroon in the Africa U-23 Cup of Nations.
The AFCON U-23 is a qualifier to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games with eight teams competing for the three slots allotted to Africa in the Olympic Games.
Ghana has not qualified for the Olympic Games since 2004 when the Games were held in Athens.
Ibrahim Tanko will be leading the team to Egypt hoping to grab one of the three slots to qualify for the competition. If he is able to pull it off, he will become the first coach in over a decade to qualify the team to the multi-sports event.
Meanwhile, Tanko will have to rely on his new players at the tournament as he will be missing some key players in his squad.
Ghana will be without Joseph Paintsil (Genk), Dauda Mohammed, Nicholas Opoku (Udinese), Majeed Ashemiru (Salzburg), Bernard Tekpertey (Dusseldorf), as their clubs failed to released them for the tournament.
Ibrahim Tanko has now switched his attention to some new players and has handed debut call ups to Evans Mensah (HJK, Finland), Frank Arhin (Dalkurd, Sweden), Robin Polley (Ado Den Hagg), Ropapa Mensah and Samuel Obeng (Real Oviedo).
The Ghana coach hopes these new players can fill the void left by the key players and achieve the target set by the team.
The team arrived in Egypt on Monday and has been preparing ahead of their opening game against Cameroon on Friday.
https://twitter.com/ghanafaofficial/status/1192154381149515776?s=20
Ghana is paired in Group A alongside hosts Egypt, Mali and Cameroon.
The Black Meteors game will be played at the Cairo International Sports Stadium.