One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Can the Antoine Semenyo fairytale reverse the Ghana decade of bad breaks?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group L preview. You can also read previews of England, Croatia, and Panama.
Can the Antoine Semenyo fairytale reverse the Ghana decade of bad breaks?
For a long time, Ghana were very good.
Ghana were one the great teams of the mid 2000s and early 2010s, a squad of superstars who made the semifinals or better at six consecutive Africa Cups of Nations from 2008 to 20117, and who were one infamous Luis Suarez handball away from becoming the first African nation to play in a World Cup semifinal in 2010.
But then those players started to age out, and then the scandal hit: In 2018, investigative journalist Anas Aremayaw Anas and his team posed as businessmen trying to sponsor the Ghanaian domestic league and captured video of Kwesi Nyantaki, head of Ghana’s football federation, accepting a cash bribe. The video was the backbone of a documentary titled Number 12: When Greed and Corruption Become the Norm and it unsurprisingly rocked the nation’s soccer bureaucracy. The investigations led to a lifetime ban for Nyantaki, as well as bans or suspensions against 53 referees and officials. The fallout became increasingly dark, and after members of Ghanaian parliament called for retaliation against the journalist, one member of the investigative team was murdered in early 2019.
Unsurprisingly, the period of time in which Ghana effectively did not have a football federation led to a pretty uneven period for its national team: The Black Stars failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, and have managed to escape from the group stage at one AFCON since then, and even failed to qualify for last year’s tournament. Since the start of 2020, Ghana have been through six managers.
But they have at least managed to return to the World Cup in this span. In 2022, they were eliminated in the group stage but did get some small measure of revenge for 2010 by taking Uruguay out with them. They managed to finally find some consistency in qualifying for this World Cup, with eight wins and just one draw across 10 matches.
But overall, Ghana have been drastically underperforming throughout the recent past. They are currently ranked 81st in the ELO Ratings, and they are yet to win a match this calendar year.
A huge reason for this recent bad run is the injury to Mohammed Kudus, who is likely the most talented active Ghanaian player. Kudus strained his quad playing for Tottenham in January and was unable to get healthy in time for this summer.
Another major issue for Ghana is that they are likely to be without one of their best players in their most winnable match. Canadian immigration laws bar issuing visas to individuals who are either convicted of or awaiting trial for crimes, and Ghanaian midfielder Thomas Partey is the subject of an ongoing sexual assault case in London. Partey can’t enter Canada, and therefore can’t play in Ghana’s opener against Panama.
But still, it is not all doom and gloom for the Black Stars. There is a vague outline of a solid squad here, not least of all due to the emergence of Antoine Semenyo. The current Manchester City player appeared at Bournemouth three years ago seemingly out of nowhere as an exceptionally two footed, remarkably effective attacker. He was capable of shooting from all angles with his left and his right, and capable of running past just about any defender that Premier League teams tried to throw at him.
But Semenyo’s much more than that. Growing up in London, Semenyo was unable to secure a spot at any of the vaunted academies of the big local clubs, eventually signing his first professional contract with Bristol City, who were in the Championship at the time.
Then, Semenyo ground his way through nearly every level of English football, with loan spells in the fifth, fourth, and third levels of the domestic pyramid before finally breaking through with Bristol and eventually getting his move to Bournemouth and eventually to Manchester City. Semenyo is still just 26, but he had to disappear to the depths of English soccer to reemerge as a star.
Ghana’s other key attackers are a pair of iron man attackers: two aging strikers whose careers have been defined by indefatigability. Jordan Ayew started his career as something of an afterthought, widely considered to be the less talented Ayew brother to the older André who was one of the stars of the 2010 and 2014 World Cup teams. But through sheer determination, Jordan Ayew has carved out a solid, ongoing career as a trustworthy striker. Most notably, Jordan became undroppable for Crystal Palace from 2019 through 2024, making 175 appearances for the London club.
Meanwhile, Iñaki Williams is a similar story of success through sheer perseverance. Raised in the Spanish Basque Country, Williams set a La Liga record by appearing in 251 consecutive matches for Athletic Bilbao between 2016 and 2023. Like Ayew, Williams is more about dedication than end product, only cracking ten league goals on three occasions. But his willingness to do all of the other part s of striker play that contribute to winning, the runs to open up space for teammates, the hold up play, the general harassment of defenders, have made him an invaluable player to one of the biggest teams in Europe for the past decade.
Ghana come into the World Cup in bad form, with some bad injury luck, after a pretty bad decade for soccer in the country.
But between the meteoric rise of Semenyo and two of the most dependable attacking presences in world football, there might be just enough in this roster to turn around Ghana’s no-good football decade.
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