Black Queens head coach Kim Lars Björkegren has described Ghana’s quarter-final elimination from the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations as the “worst feeling” of his 20-year coaching career.
Ghana’s hopes of securing automatic qualification for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup were dealt a major blow after the Black Queens suffered a 2-1 defeat to Malawi at the Al Madina Stadium in Rabat.
Chantelle Boye-Hlorkah gave Ghana a dream start by opening the scoring in the seventh minute, but Malawi responded through Temwa Chawinga before Rose Smith Kadzere scored the decisive goal in the 79th minute.
The defeat means Ghana will not qualify automatically for the World Cup through the WAFCON and must now go through the play-offs to keep their hopes alive.
Speaking after the match, Björkegren admitted the result was particularly painful because of what qualification would have meant for the team and the country.
“Maybe potentially the worst feeling I had in 20 years of coaching. I’m feeling so much for this team, for Ghana,” he said.
“I really wanted to help them to go to the first World Cup in 20 years, and we felt that we had a good chance to do it today, but we didn’t perform well enough, even if it was a little bit of a 50-50 game.
“Always when you’re in the losing team, you need to face the truth, and the fact is that we lost by one ball, and now it’s really painful,” he added.
The Swedish coach said Ghana lost control of the match after making an impressive start, with the Black Queens increasingly relying on long balls and allowing Malawi to impose themselves on the game.
“I felt that we started the game pretty well. We were holding the ball in the team, we were creating some chances, we scored a goal. I think we started to kick the ball a little bit too long at the end of the first half and made it a little bit too easy for us and also for the opponent.
“Both teams were stretched, and it was more like a ping-pong game for a while, and that is just good for the opponent,” he explained.
Björkegren said the team discussed the need to regain control during the interval and initially improved after the restart, but ultimately failed to create enough opportunities to prevent Malawi from claiming victory.
“We spoke about it at half-time to try to control it a little bit more. I think we did it for a while in the second, but in the end we couldn’t control it enough and create chances enough,” he said.
The coach also cited Ghana’s limited recovery time and travel schedule as factors that affected the team.
Ghana had fewer rest days than some of their opponents because of their Group D schedule and also had to travel ahead of the quarter-final.
Björkegren pointed to midfielder Alice Kusi as an example of a player who appeared to be affected by fatigue.
“We talked about in the press conference yesterday that we had fewer rest days before this game, including some travelling. Of course, you can potentially see that Alice is a good example that I talked about, that I felt she started the game really well, but she couldn’t hold up her performance, probably because she was tired.
“She played a couple of days ago, and you probably need one more day to get fit, but it’s out of our control, and that’s just a fact when you are in Group D that you will always have fewer days to recover,” he added.
Despite the disappointment, Ghana’s World Cup hopes are not over.
The Black Queens will have another opportunity to secure a place at the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup when they face fellow West African side Côte d’Ivoire in the play-offs on Thursday at 18:00 GMT.
