Ghana was impressive during their first World Cup 2010 game, but didn’t perform as well in today’s match versus Australia missing a good opportunity to take a three point lead from Germany and Serbia. Australia on the other hand that had basically collapsed against Germany showed a lot of improvement, taking the lead in the game and getting a draw while playing with 10 players for over 70 minutes.
The match started with the worst way possible for Ghana that conceived a goal just 11 minutes in the game: Mark Bresciano took a foul shot directly on the opposing goalkeeper, but Richard Kingson failed to control the ball sending it to Brett Holman that had no problem scoring for Australia. Ghana came back and started putting pressure on Australia, and in 24′ Harry Kewell used his hand inside the goal area to stop a shot from Jonathan Mensah. The referee took out his red card and gave the penalty to Ghana. Asamoah Gyan sent the ball in the back of the net, exactly like the previous game were Ghana also scored with a penalty.
Ghana had the player advantage but was unable to create big chances for the biggest part of the game, with the Australian defence blocking all paths. Kevin-Prince Boateng missed a good chance in 44′, and Asamoah Gyan lost another one in 71′. But the biggest chance of the game came one minute later from Australia: Luke Wilkshire took a shot that was blocked by Kingson, the ball ended up on Joshua Kennedy that fired a second shot but Kingson was again there.
In the last minutes of the game Ghana’s pressure was overwhelming, but both Mensah in 88′ and Ayew a minute later failed to score a second goal. Ghana missed a great opportunity to take a bigger lead in Group D, and now everything is still up for grabs during the last game day next week.