Roger de Sa says Ghana World Cup role was ‘fantastic’ experience

South African coach Roger de Sa says his short spell as assistant to Carlos Queiroz with Ghana was a valuable education and a career highlight, despite lasting only around three to four months.

De Sa travelled with Ghana to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the USA, Mexico, and Canada before leaving the role in July and returning to South Africa.

The tournament was his third World Cup as a coach, following assistant-coaching positions with Portugal in 2010 and Iran at Qatar 2022.

“Obviously, doing the Ghana gig for the World Cup was fantastic,” De Sa told iDiski Times.

“It was my third World Cup as a coach. It is a pinnacle of football. I must admit that when you’re involved in the World Cup, you realise it’s the cream of the crop – the organisation, stadiums, hotels, the level of the players there is nothing you can fault.”

De Sa said each of his World Cup experiences had surpassed the previous one, describing the USA tournament as “unbelievable”.

“Since I started in 2010, it’s kind of getting better and better, Qatar was fantastic, USA was unbelievable as well,” he added.

His work with Ghana also gave him the chance to coach a number of high-level players, including Manchester City forward Antoine Semenyo.

“To work with such national teams, I had an opportunity to work with phenomenal players like Semenyo, all top players you can think of,” he said.

De Sa has also worked with Egypt and said his career had included the opportunity to coach Mohamed Salah and Cristiano Ronaldo.

“I worked with Egypt, Moh Salah, I had an opportunity to coach Ronaldo in 2010. It’s been a fantastic journey, most enjoyable. It was long, hard, lots of travelling, lots of visiting clubs and players.”

The demands of his Ghana role were particularly intense. De Sa said he travelled extensively to monitor players and visit clubs across Europe while preparing for the World Cup.

“The Ghana stint, I think I did something like 28 cities in six weeks. I visited about 20 clubs with about 25 players in Europe. So just that alone was an education.”

De Sa said his coaching career had now taken him to seven national teams and three World Cups.

“Coaching in World Cup was great, seven national teams I have done and three World Cups.”