Ghana National Women’s Football Team’s Swedish coach Kim Lars Björkegren has opened up on the pain of missing out on the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations semi-finals and 2027 Fifa Women’s World Cup following their loss to the Scorchers on Saturday night.
The Malawi National Women’s Football Team on Sunday edged the Black Queens 2-1 in Rabat, Morocco to send them packing from the continental showpiece.
He was quoted by Sporty FM as having said it was his worst feeling in 20 years of his coaching career.
Bjorkegren, who replaced Nora Hauptle early last year, expressed disappointment over the outcome of the game.
“I can say that the worst feeling I have in 20 years of coaching, I am feeling so much for this team, for Ghana,” he said during the post-match press conference.
“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, but we didn’t perform well enough.
“It was a little bit of a 50-50 game; always when you are the losing team you need to face the truth and the fact is that we lost by one goal and it’s really painful.”
Ghana began the tournament with a 2-0 victory over another debutant, Cape Verde, but lost 1-0 to Cameroon in the second game before managing a 1-1 draw against Mali in the final Group D fixture.
Scorchers coach Lovemore Fazili described the match as tough.
He said: “Ghana came to win and when we conceded a goal, we urged the players to fight on which they did and got an equaliser.
“Then at half time, I told the girls that the Ghanaians were tired and they should keep pushing which led to the winning goal scored by [Rose] Kabzere.”
