Former Black Stars striker Augustine Ahinful expects the national team to learn from their mistakes in last Wednesday’s loss to Zambia and overcome the Southern Africans in the qualifiers to the 2014 FIFA World Cup later this year.

Ghana are housed in Africa pre-final qualifying stage group D with the Zambians, Sudan and Lesotho with Ghana opening the qualifiers against Lesotho at home on June 1. The highly awaited and decisive trip to Lusaka to face the Chipolopolo follows next for the Black Stars seven days later.

Ahinful is confident the Black Stars should come good against Zambia.

“Why not? It’s just unfortunate that we lost to them this time but it’s just one game. Tactically I think they were better than us and that’s why they won but it does not mean that they have any advantage in the World Cup qualifiers,” Ahinful exclusively told ALL SPORTS yesterday.

Now a member of the Ghana Football Association’s Technical and Development Committee, Ahinful insists certain mistakes which cost Ghana victory in Wednesday’s Africa Cup semi finals, can be worked on for the Black Stars to overcome the Zambians.

“I think the coach shouldn’t have started John Mensah because the injury he had sustained in the previous match was serious. So you are short by one man because the probability that he will last 90 minutes are very less. So his substitution would have been used for an attacking player late in the game if a 100% fit defender had started,” Ahinful reflected.

He added: “Looking at the chances we created and even the penalty we got, if we had scored, nobody can tell what would have happened. We cannot use this match as a basis to judge the upcoming World Cup qualifiers.”