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| Ghana : The Black Starlets out |
The 16-year-old goalkeeper of Spanish U-17 team David DE GEA deprived The Black Starlets of a victory on Wednesday night 5 September to get to the final of the U-17 World Cup in Korea. He was without any doubt his side’s Man of the Match.
Through bravery, good decision making and excellent reflexes on four separate occasions he stopped the Ghanaians from scoring. The Atletico Madrid youngster showed great heart to throw his body at the feet of Ghanaian striker Sadick ADAMS when he bore down on goal. DE GEA received a stray boot to the head, but continued with a minimum of fuss. A few minutes later, after ADAMS received an excellent pass from Ransford OSEI, the goalkeeper came off his line to narrow the angle, which proved to be the right decision, since Ghana’s forwarder fired the ball into the side netting. Minutes later, DE GEA superbly tipped over the bar OSEI’s header from six yards. In the second period of extra time he produced another high calibre save when he stopped Reading’s Kelvin BOSSMAN’s attempt to equalize for Ghana.
DE GEA contribution through the tournament to help Spain book a place in the final has proved capital, especially his heroics in the quarter-final victory over France, together with fine performance against Honduras, Syria and Korea DPR. A BOJAN’s strike four minutes from the end of extra time completed a tense 2-1 win of Spain over Ghana at the Urban Complex Stadium. As expected, the tie proved to be an intense affair and it was Ghana who revealed their intentions first when Sadick ADAMS flashed a 40-yard drive just before Spanish CAMACHO and Fran MERIDA began to find their feet on the soggy pitch. Prompted by their precise passing the Spanish started to work their way into the game. Their four top men where IAGO on the right, Isma LOPEZ on the left, and Dani AQUINO and BOJAN who probed Ghana’s defence with some typically surging runs from deep .
In the second half Ghana boss Tellas TETTEH replaced Issac DONKOR by Abeiku QUANSAH, almost for no avail since it was ADAMS who continued to carry the greatest threat. But a little over 20 minutes left AQUINO converted an IAGO cross at the second attempt. Without panicking the Ghanaians went on trying to find a solution until ADAMS collected a smart pass from QUANSAH and scored to equalize 1-1. Unfortunately for the Black Starlets BOJAN sealed Spain’s victory by a sublimely executed set-piece moved, before receiving a red card in the dying seconds ruling him out of Sunday’s final.
For the third time in his history Spain is going to play the final next Sunday against Nigeria. As for the plucky Ghanaians, they will have a third-place play-off with Germany.
Samuel MBAJUM
(Source: FIFA.com)
07/09/2007 |
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