The Ghana national football team, popularly known as the Black Stars, is the national association football team of Ghana and is controlled by the Ghana Football Association. Before gaining independence from Great Britain in 1957, the country played as the Gold Coast. Although the team did not qualify for the senior FIFA World Cup until 2006, they had qualified for five straight Olympic Games Football Tournaments when the tournament was still a full senior national team competition. The team have won the Africa Cup of Nations four times[7] (in 1963, 1965, 1978, and 1982), making Ghana the second most successful team in the contest's history, behind Egypt. The Olympic Team,[6] the Black Meteors, in 1992 became the first African country to win a medal at football.

After going through 2005 unbeaten, Ghana won the FIFA most improved team of the year award [1] and they reached the second round of the 2006 Germany World Cup. The Ghana Amateur Football Association was founded in 1957, soon after the country's independence, and was affiliated to both CAF and FIFA the following year, Englishman George Ainsley being appointed coach of the national team. In 1960 the Black Stars played Spanish giants Real Madrid, who were at the time Spanish, European and intercontinental champions, and drew 3–3. Charles Kumi Gyamfi became coach in 1961, and Ghana won successive Africa Cup of Nations titles, in 1963 and 1965, and achieved their record win, 13–0 away to Kenya, shortly after the second of these. They also reached the final of the tournament in 1968 and 1970, losing 1–0 on each occasion, to DR Congo and Sudan respectively. Their domination of this tournament earned the country the nickname of "the Brazil of Africa" in the 1960s[8]. The team had no success in FIFA World Cup qualification during this era, and failed to qualify for three successive African Cup of Nations in the 1970s, but qualified for the Olympic Games Football Tournaments, reaching the quarter finals in 1964 and withdrawing on political grounds in 1976 and 1980. Ghana again won the African Cup of Nations in 1978, retaining the Abdelaziz Abdallah Salem Trophy in perpetuity for having won it three times, and 1982, but a relatively barren period followed, with the full national team dominating the short lived West African Nations Cup from 1982–87, but making little progress in continent-wide competitions until the appointment of Burkhard Ziese as coach in 1991. The 1992 African Cup of Nations, after three failures to reach the final tournament, saw Ghana finish second, beaten on penalties in the final by Côte d'Ivoire. Disharmony among the squad, which eventually lead to parliamentary and executive intervention to settle issues between two of the team, Abedi Pele and Anthony Yeboah, may have played some part in the failure of the team to build on the successes of the national underage teams. Ghana slipped to 89th place in the FIFA World Rankings, but a new generation of players who went to the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship final became the core of the team at the 2002 African Cup of Nations and the 2004 Olympic Games[6], and were undefeated for a year in 2005 and reached the finals of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the first time the team had reached the global stage of the tournament. Ghana started with a 2–0 defeat to eventual champions Italy, but wins over the Czech Republic (2–0) and USA (2–1) saw them through to the second round, where they were beaten 3–0 by Brazil. They again qualified for the 2010 World Cup finals. 2010 World Cup qualification The Ghanaian team went on to secure a 100 percent record in their qualification campaign, winning the group and becoming the first African team to qualify for 2010 FIFA World Cup. The World Cup Draw in Cape Town on the 4 December 2009 saw the Ghanaian being placed alongside Germany, Serbia and Australia in Group D..