Ghana FA Aim For Sustained Success After World Cup Show

The president of the Ghana Football Association Kwesi Nyantakyi, says he wants the Black Stars to break into the top ten of the Fifa rankings. Ghana were World Cup quarter-finalists in 2010 and rose to 15th in the global standings earlier this year. They have since slipped back to 36th but Nyantakyi remains optimistic. �Five years ago we were 50th in the world, there�s still a lot we can do to enhance our status,� he told the BBC�s World Football programme. Nyantakyi is looking to the country�s youth set-up to help develop the team, with Ghana having won the Under-20 World Cup two years ago. �[We will] maintain and consolidate our position as the best in Africa by extending our dominance into youth football,� he said. But the progress of Ghana�s youth teams has stalled in recent months, with the Black Satellites failing to qualify for the current Under-20 World Cup in Colombia. They did not win a single game at the African Youth Championship earlier this year in South Africa and assistant coach Yaw Preko told the BBC that their previous success had hampered them. �We had a bunch of good players [in South Africa] but for some reason they choked, I think they couldn�t handle the pressure,� he told World Football. �You know most of the time as underdogs you go in and deliver but as defending African champions, defending World Champions, I think it was too much for the boys � so they choked.� The global rankings were introduced by Fifa in 1993 and a year later Nigeria reached Africa�s highest ever ranking of fifth in the table as they headed to the World Cup in the USA.