Black Queens, Meteors in Action

By Raymond Ackumey

Ghana's Black Queens will host Les Pantherés of Gabon in the second leg second round Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games qualifying match at the Accra Sports Stadium tomorrow.

The game which was originally fixed for the Cape Coast Stadium has been shifted to the capital.

Coach Mercy Tagoe-Quarcoo's side takes a 3-0 first leg advantage in Libreville into this game which she expect will not be anything different from the last leg.

Goals from midfielders Juliet Acheampong, Priscilla Okyere and skipper Portia Boakye condemned the East African nation to a thrashing at home and makes the tie a very difficult one for them.

The Black Queens are chasing their first ever appearance at the global multi-sports showpiece and should they scale the Gabon hurdle, will face Kenya which beat Malawi yesterday in their qualifier.

Three days after the Black Queens game, their male counterparts, the Black Meteors will host the Dessert Foxes at the same venue in the first leg qualifier for the same competition.

The Meteors will hope to make it to the next Olympic Games after missing out of the competition since 2004.

Coach Ibrahim Tanko's side has been in camp since August 7 with the local component of his squad which will be pruned down to 11 players and augmented with 11 other foreign based players this week for the assignment.

Tanko said that it has been quite a while since the Ghana made an appearance at the Olympic Games football competition but are hugely determined to rewrite that piece of soccer history.

"Tokyo 2020 is a must; Ghanaians are expecting nothing short of qualification and we cannot afford to fail them. We are determined to answer the roll call for the Games and we would stop at nothing to achieve that."

The team will travel to Algiers for the return encounter scheduled for Tuesday September 10.

Winner of the two-legged tie will book a place at the African U-23 championship to be staged in Egypt from November 8-22, 2019 and would be in the reckoning to seal one of the three African slots available for the Games in Japan.

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