Ghana and Nigeria are struggling beneath the weight of Afcon history

Composite: Guardian Picture Desk

Between them, Ghana’s Black Stars and Nigeria’s Super Eagles have won a total of seven Africa Cup of Nations titles. Nigeria won the last of their three titles 11 years ago. For fans in Africa’s most populous country, who view triumphs at Afcon as a birthright, that’s a triumph in another lifetime. For their perennial arch-rivals Ghana it is indeed approaching a lifetime since they won their fourth title, in Libya in 1982.

Having dominated African football in the 1960s and 1970s, the 42-year Afcon drought has left Ghanaians nostalgic for glories past. Anthony Yeboah, a two-time winner of the Bundesliga golden boot, with Eintracht Frankfurt and Hamburg, admits that a failure to win an Afcon championship for Ghana is a huge stain on an otherwise sterling career.

“When you become a successful footballer and there are one or two things you do not achieve, there will surely be regret,” Yeboah told the Guardian. “Teamwork is very important. When teamwork is not working, but you just have individual players, you can’t achieve anything. This was the problem that we had.”

What happened with that 1990s generation, which included the footballing legend Abedi Pele, is replicating itself with the current Black Stars, which includes André and Jordan Ayew, his two sons. A 2-1 defeat against Cape Verde in their tournament opener on Sunday left the manager, Chris Hughton, searching for the right words to explain to millions of angry Ghanaians why they had lost.

“We can’t concede the type of goal that we did in the last minutes of the game, particularly at that stage, because we were pushing to get the winner,” Hughton said. “We conceded a very poor goal and hence a hugely disappointing start for us.” The former Newcastle and Brighton manager was later almost attacked by an irate Ghanaian fan at their team hotel.

With a record of four wins in 11 matches since taking charge of Ghana last February, Hughton heads into a potentially defining game against the seven-time Afcon winners Egypt on Thursday. After Ghana’s first-round exit at the previous tournament in Cameroon, a repeat of that very poor performance will go down very badly indeed.

“There was a lot of confidence that Hughton would significantly improve the team, but none of that has happened,” the Ghanaian football expert Mike Oti Adjei said. “I think that whatever happens in Ivory Coast, it is highly unlikely he will stay in charge. The relationship between him and the Ghana FA has been rocky for a while, and I think they will go separate ways afterwards.

“Ghana has won once in the last 10 Afcon games and lost the last two games against Comoros and now Cape Verde. Unless the team improves in every aspect, I struggle to see how they would beat Egypt.”

José Peseiro, Nigeria’s Portuguese coach, is having an equally torrid time with the three-time winners. Successive 1-1 draws against Lesotho and Zimbabwe in 2026 World Cup qualifying did little to bolster his battered credentials with a critical Nigerian audience.

“I believe in the players. Each team has more quality in certain positions,” Peseiro said before the start of the tournament. “My job is to find the balance [in defence and midfield].” The 1-1 draw against Equatorial Guinea on Saturday has only fuelled the fury of Nigerians who have been calling for Peseiro’s dismissal during the past six months.

“The present Super Eagles are not strong in two major areas of the field – the midfield and goalkeeping,” the former Nigeria captain and 1980 Afcon winner Segun Odegbami said. “There is little that can be done about the team’s strength without the influence of a few players with exceptional skills and abilities in certain areas. There is a dearth of creative and attacking midfield players, who can hold and distribute the ball well.”

While the lack of a creative midfield – and the critical service it provides – has been a consistent frustration for the team’s star striker and reigning African footballer of the year, Victor Osimhen, it was his profligacy in front of goal on Saturday that played a huge role in Nigeria’s inability to secure a needed win. “We played well [against Equatorial Guinea] but I don’t know why we did not score,” Peseiro said. “We had six, seven, eight chances during the game. Scoring has been a problem and we have to improve on this.”

The Super Eagles, and Osimhen in particular, will have to find the tactical elixir to end their goal drought on Thursday in their must-win game against the hosts, who will be backed by a full house at Ebimpé. For Peseiro, divine intervention would not go amiss. “Sometimes God gives, sometime God takes,” he said. “Let’s hope God gives to Nigeria for the next match.”