Left-back Gideon Mensah says the team feels the pain of Ghana’s World Cup exit but will use the disappointment as motivation for the future.

Ghana’s 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign ended with a 1-0 defeat to Colombia in the Round of 32 on Friday night, Jhon Arias’ 14th-minute goal proving decisive at Kansas City Stadium.

“I think we came ready. But at the end of the day, the result was not on our side. Sorry about the loss,” Mensah said post-match.

The AJ Auxerre defender highlighted the unforgiving nature of knockout football after Ghana conceded following Marvin’s injury.

“It doesn’t get easy. It’s not like you are playing in the group stages where you have a second game or a third game. It’s a knockout stage. You try as much to equalise or to win the game any way you can. It’s quite unfortunate that we got a goal after Marvin went out on Alidu’s side. It’s part of the game. You can’t blame him. You can’t blame nobody. We went out on the field as a team and then we came out as a team.”

Mensah spoke about the weight of expectation and the emotional toll of losing on the world stage.

“It’s something that I think me as a player, I’ve been playing football for quite some time now. You’re not happy when you lose a game, especially in the World Cup. Like I said earlier on, we came into the game very confident. That breaks us a bit. The fact that we have so many people hoping that we take them to the next stage. At some point, we don’t even play for ourselves.”

“We play for the people, we play for our family, we play for people that love the game. People that are sacrificing their sleep to watch us. Obviously, you think about these people and then the emotions are always going to be there.”

Despite the disappointment, Mensah insists the squad is proud of their World Cup journey and ready to respond.

“At the same time, like I said, we are very proud of our journey in this tournament. We are the only people that can make the people that are sad now happy again. We can’t dwell in the sadness forever. Everybody is down, but at the same time we are on the battlefield. We are the soldiers for the country. We step back again, work on ourselves and then make sure that we are making every Ghanaian proud again.”

He also praised the impact of African teams at the 2026 World Cup.

“I think this tournament has been very good for African football. It shows that we have so much to show in the World Cup. We have so much to show in football. It shows that when we are given the opportunity, we can do something better.”

Ghana now turns attention to the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations Qualifiers.