Festus Abanga Akwetey

God is love/Building Technologist/ Agribusiness plug/Local tour agent/DIY enthusiast/Family guy/Meat lover

CEO OF DOGUD HUB

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@garyalsmith A very valid point!

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

Me 0p3 s3 midi Didi jollof nibi.

Rhyming scheme AAA.

[Didi @DidiJollof]

We’re giving away 5 packs of jollof and 5 packs of waakye. Quote what you’d like for lunch and you may be surprised.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@Absolutelyv1p @Shinamuller It is the English you don’t understand or the problem is with comprehension?

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@trasako1 Lila be the real Ish!!!

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@AmohKoramah Menunatu Sulemana….Champion goalie!!!

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

Worth noting!

[The_AwisiDede @AwisiDede]

The Community Service Bill hasn’t attracted as much opposition as the Tribunals Bill. However, concerns about its effectiveness still linger.
I sat down with the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior @fatheranthoni to unpack the bill, address the concerns, and examine what it could mean for our criminal justice system.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@MrCollinsTetteh @KwekuOA Now I know!

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@HeartsOfOakGH Sammy Agyei

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@nyannthierry @grok what’s the context?

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@garyalsmith @agyeitah @eastsportsman Gentlemanly

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

Apt

[Enoch Δ @agyeitah]

Totally missed your response.

But this isn’t about pride, @garyalsmith. It’s about false narratives being given the time of day.

Underdogs lose leads to favourites. Everywhere. In every confederation.

When Japan lost a 2–0 lead to Belgium, people praised Belgium, gave Japan some slack and moved on. Nobody indicted Asian football.

Croatia scored first and lost yesterday.

It’s football.

But I find the way you build this supposed 30-year pattern strange.

Your most obvious pull was Nigeria in 1994. So I went back and checked the actual data.

All of it.

Since 1970, African teams have taken the lead in 79 World Cup matches.

They won 44, drew 21 and lost 14.

That means African teams avoided defeat 82.3% of the time after taking the lead.

Even in this tournament, the full picture is different from the story being told.

Yes, Côte d’Ivoire led and lost to Germany. DR Congo led and lost to England. Senegal led and lost to Belgium.

But Morocco led and drew with Brazil.

Egypt led and drew with Belgium and Iran.

Cape Verde led and drew with Uruguay.

Algeria led and drew with Austria.

South Africa led and beat South Korea.

Côte d’Ivoire led and won two games.

Egypt led and beat New Zealand.

Senegal led and beat Iraq.

Ghana led and beat Panama.

Algeria led and beat Jordan.

So African teams have led 15 times in this tournament: 7 wins, 5 draws and 3 losses.

That is not a continental pathology.

That is football.

And if this were an African problem, Africa should at least be uniquely bad at it.

We aren’t.

From 1970 to 2022, African teams lost 17.2% of World Cup matches after taking the lead.

AFC teams lost 20%.

CONCACAF teams lost 23.4%.

Even if we start from 1994, your 30-year window, it is CAF 16.4%, AFC 20% and CONCACAF 22.9%.

So where exactly is this unmistakable African pattern?

You have built a continental theory from a few painful games spread across decades.

To do that, you have to ignore Algeria holding against West Germany in ’82.

Cameroon repeatedly holding in ’90.

Nigeria seeing off Spain in ’98.

Ghana killing games in ’06.

And just four years ago, African teams led nine times at the 2022 World Cup and didn’t lose once.

Cameroon held against Brazil.

Tunisia held against France.

Morocco held against Belgium, Canada and Portugal.

That was four years ago. Not 30.

And before someone says these numbers are inflated by games against weaker opposition, let’s narrow the sample further.

Let’s look only at games where African teams took the lead against European and South American opposition.

Since 1970, it has happened 53 times.

African teams won 27.

Drew 14.

Lost 12.

That is a 77.4% non-loss rate after taking the lead against the two historically strongest footballing regions in the world.

So what you have identified is not a pattern.

It is a highlight reel of pain with the denominator deleted.

Yes, the collapses were real. Senegal’s was bad. DR Congo’s was bad. Côte d’Ivoire’s was bad.

But Japan’s against Belgium was bad too.

Croatia scored first and lost.

Spain’s collapse against Nigeria in 1998 was spectacular.

The difference is that those failures were attributed to the people who actually oversaw them: the players, the coach, the team.

Nobody said, “Croatia blew a lead, so Europeans lack concentration.”

Nobody built an Asian theory from Japan doing it more than once.

As for the coaches you cite, Thiaw was diagnosing Senegal’s game management.

That was his team in a game his team blew.

Senegal is a team.

Africa is a continent.

A coach owning his own failure is accountability. Stretching it into a verdict on 54 countries is your addition, not his.

And that is my pushback.

You may be coming from a place of good intentions. But Africa, and I must say this to you as an African, is diverse.

Sometimes coaches make bad decisions. Sometimes players panic. Sometimes underdogs sit too deep. Sometimes the better team comes back.

Sometimes a team just blows a lead.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@agyeitah @garyalsmith A good read with facts and figures!

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

Service to God and country.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

Word!

[Gabby Otchere-Darko @GabbyDarko]

Is this FIFA World Cup revealing something subconsciously darker than many of us care to admit? Or these are merely isolated incidents?

Following England’s goalless draw with Ghana, the England captain referred to his opponents as “these type of nations.” The remark has understandably not gone down well with many Ghanaians, who felt it was insulting and diminished what was, in truth, a highly disciplined and tactically accomplished performance.

Yes, the draw was frustrating for England but only because they believed Ghana to be a cool chop. But, they rather got exposed not to have a response to Ghana’s game plan and yet still talked down how they were out-manoeuvred in post-match reviews!

It also brought to mind comments by Bastian Schweinsteiger (please don’t ask me what it means in German), the former German midfielder and now a television pundit, after Germany’s narrow victory over Côte d’Ivoire. Germany needed a late chance to escape with the win, yet his assessment struck many as surprisingly dismissive of the Ivorians, despite the balance of play suggesting a contest between two evenly matched sides.

Perhaps these are isolated examples of poor wording. But they are more than likely not.

One thing this World Cup is making increasingly clear, however, is that the more FIFA opens the competition to teams from every continent, the higher the standard of football becomes. Greater inclusion has not diluted the tournament. It has enriched it. Nations once regarded as outsiders are proving, through regular exposure to elite competition, that they possess the tactical sophistication, technical quality and mental resilience to compete with anyone.

The question, then, is whether our mindset and language have kept pace with that reality.

Too often, when traditional football powers are frustrated by African, Asian or CONCACAF teams, the discussion subtly shifts from praising the underdog’s quality to explaining the favourite’s disappointment. European teams are often applauded for their tactical discipline; African teams employing the same discipline are sometimes described merely as making the game “difficult.”

Words matter. They shape perceptions. And perceptions often reveal assumptions we may not even realise we hold.

Let us use this World Cup to not only change the footballing landscape. Let us use it to also help change some long-held assumptions about where world-class football comes from and reminding ourselves that excellence has always been more widely distributed than the game itself once allowed us to see.

Let us all learn from Declan Rice that prejudice is wrong. Let’s give all teams the opportunity to prove themselves where it matters, on the pitch.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

Fact!

[ESPN Africa @ESPNAfrica]

Goalkeeper Benjamin Asare plays for Hearts of Oak in the Ghana Premier League.

He’s spent his entire club career in Ghana.

Now he’s kept a clean sheet against England at the World Cup, a nation whose players all feature in Europe’s top leagues 😮👏

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@Iam_aJournalist @ChristopherNim8 King of Kings 3x
Strength Thomas Partey,
We commit him to your care. Father Lord keep and preserve him. Partey, we know your capabilities and experience…The English players are no match for you…”Accolades”Lord bless his legs and let him bring glory to Ghana. Summary.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@eastsportsman Fact!

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@IRAN_GHANA It’s also called “Mallam goal”.

[Festus Abanga Akwetey @abangadogud]

@PrinceJidulah Civet