Former  Ghana captain Stephen Appiah has outlined the virtues and mental fortitude that Ghana's maiden World Cup squad in 2006 possessed.

Ghana despite the abundance of talents available qualified for the Mundial for the first time in 2006 in Germany with Stephen Appiah the captain.

He says that his side in 2006 were not afraid to win games and always wanted to make their mark at the World Cup and not just participate.

Ghana lost its opening match against Italy 2-0 but won against the Czech Republic 2-0 in their second game before beating USA 2-1 to seal qualification.

“I was lucky to play with players who were not afraid of games," he said on Betway’s “Top 10 World Cup Moments with Stephen Appiah.”.

“Because these are games if you lose the first game and at that high stage, you will never go through in the second game playing against, I mean, the second best.

“We showed them that we are not just there to participate. We are there to make a name and we beat them.”

He added that the 2-0 win against the Czech Republic “was a difficult game because we lost the first game against Italy and we are playing with the second-best team in the world. The players that they had [were very good].

“After Gyan scored, we played like 20 minutes and I was telling the boys, ‘I think that today is our day. We should continue playing like the way we are playing.

“After the game, I went to Pavel Nedved, we played together at Juventus, and I was like, ‘did you see the ball that we played with today? Was it Adidas or Nike?’

“I cracked a joke and he started laughing because they didn’t see the ball. We played like 80% of the ball.”

Ghana qualified to the round of 16 but lost to five-time winners Brazil 3-0 at the round of 16.