Ghana's U-17 side tumbled out of the WAFU Zone B Championship in fourth place after a 2-0 loss to hosts Burkina Faso in the bronze-medal match.
Ghana's Black Starlets will head home from the WAFU Zone B U-17 Championship empty-handed, finishing fourth after a 2-0 defeat to hosts Burkina Faso in the third-place play-off. For a young side that looked like one of the tournament's strongest early on, it is a bitter way to end.
The road to heartbreak began in the semi-finals, where Ghana fell 1-0 to Côte d'Ivoire and lost their shot at the final. The bronze-medal match offered a chance to regroup and take something from the tournament, but Burkina Faso, backed by their home crowd, finished the job.
It was a sharp reversal from the group stage. The Starlets topped Group A unbeaten with seven points from three games, opening with a 1-0 win over Togo, then beating Benin 3-1 before holding Burkina Faso to a 0-0 draw. Solid, confident and hard to break down, they looked like genuine title contenders.
That form vanished once the knockout rounds arrived. Back-to-back defeats to Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso left Ghana with nothing to show for a promising start, and the manner of the finish will sting.
The stakes were high, too. Ghana had targeted a place at the 2027 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, and ending the campaign without a podium finish leaves that ambition under pressure. The young Starlets now have lessons to absorb about turning strong group-stage showings into knockout success.
