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Antoine Semenyo was only 10 years old when Ghana came within a Luis Suárez handball of becoming the first African team to reach the semi-finals of a World Cup. The Manchester City forward can still vividly recall the emotions that night as he watched with his family in Bexleyheath, south-east London.
“I remember being at my uncle’s house, and we were screaming after the handball, thinking we were going through,” he said in an interview last month. “Watching Ghana play in the World Cup was so special. Mum, Dad, uncles, aunties, cousins all turn up to one house, and we would watch all the games together, celebrating and screaming. Ghana came in [for me] when I was 19 or 20, so I was never going to turn it down.”
Yet while Asamoah Gyan and co certainly made an impression on the young Semenyo – who will come up against familiar faces in Nico O’Reilly and John Stones against England in Massachusetts on Tuesday – the legacy of the Black Stars’ historic run to the quarter-finals in 2010 in South Africa has largely been disappointment. Ghana’s appearance at the next World Cup in Brazil ended in an early elimination after finishing bottom of their group and they didn’t fare much better in Qatar four years ago, despite beating South Korea. Their failure to reach the Africa Cup of Nations finals last year for the first time since 2004 was a national embarrassment that was only eased by qualifying for a fifth World Cup.
Gyan – whose missed penalty in the shootout against Uruguay proved terminal 16 years ago – saw his record as the youngest Ghanaian to score at a finals eclipsed by the 20-year-old rising star Caleb Yirenkyi in the 1-0 win over Panama in Toronto. The 40-year-old former Sunderland striker – known as Baby Jet – played his part in the buildup to the victory as he led a traditional pre-match jama session featuring singing and dancing at the team’s hotel in Toronto before the game, while his celebration with the winger Abdul Fatawu in the changing room afterwards went viral. The victory has also rekindled hopes of emulating the class of 2010, who beat Serbia by the same scoreline in South Africa in their opening match thanks to a late penalty from Gyan.
“The momentum we got from the first game was really important,” says Jonathan Mensah, the central defender who came into the team for the draw against Australia in their second match back in 2010. “To get a point in our second game was crucial because that helped us qualify for the next stage. Now we need another good game against a good English side.”
Mensah was only 19 when he was drafted in by Ghana’s Serbian manager, Milovan Rajevac, but had been part of the team that won the Under-20 World Cup in Egypt a year earlier by beating Brazil on penalties in the final. Several members of that team, including André Ayew, Kwadwo Asamoah and Dominic Adiyiah – whose goalbound header was infamously blocked with both hands by Suárez during that epic last-eight match in Johannesburg – went on to play leading roles in the side that captured the hearts of the continent.
They were even christened BaGhana BaGhana after the hosts of Africa’s first-ever World Cup were eliminated early and given a rapturous reception by supporters at a special event in Johannesburg the day after they lost to Uruguay that was attended by thousands of people.
The 2026 team, coached by Carlos Queiroz, who became Ghana’s fifth coach in as many years only a month before the tournament, can sadly not rely on such a rich seam of emerging talent.
“We have some talented players now but it’s nothing compared to 2010 because we had a little bit of everything in that squad,” says Mensah, who went on to play for clubs in Italy, Spain and Russia before spending several years in MLS.
“We had the likes of Kevin-Prince Boateng, Kwadwo and Gyan – who was arguably the hottest we’ve ever seen him. In 2010, he was in his prime and he was killing every game he played in. This squad is fairly young yet still talented. So you just need to allow them to grow into what they could possibly be and not put too much pressure on them.
I think Ghana can cause England some issues but they will need to roll up their sleeves and fight because we know how hard it will be.”
Repeated attempts to persuade Nottingham Forest’s Callum Hudson-Odoi to commit to Ghana failed, while Eddie Nketiah of Crystal Palace has also been on the radar but was unavailable due to injury. Eight of Queiroz’s squad were born outside Ghana compared with only two – Boateng and Quincy Owusu-Abeyie – in 2010.
Semenyo has emerged as the star player only recently in the absence of Tottenham’s Mohammed Kudus due to a serious muscle injury that has kept him out since January. Semenyo has scored only three goals in 35 caps and will be eager to make his mark on the biggest stage of all having been inspired as a child.
“Whenever I see a video of 2010, it brings back so many memories,” says Mensah, who was suspended for the Uruguay game after picking up two yellow cards earlier in the .
“We would have loved to get to the semi-finals and then go for the ultimate prize. But it was a great experience and we learned so much from that. Hopefully these guys will not just emulate what we did by getting to the quarter-finals but also emulate the fighting spirit that we had.”
