USA 1-2 Ghana aet
What an absorbing contest this was. ITV would be kicking themselves that they picked today's games - obviously they had banked on England winning the group, but instead the USA did and so faced Ghana. I think that ITV were a little piqued, as their main man Clive Tyldsley did neither of today's games. Instead for this one we had Peter Drury with Tyldsley's usual side kick Jim Beglin. Jim was OK, but sorry Peter, you really didn't need to be quite so patronising towards these two lesser light of world football. For an ex BBC radio man this was unusual.
Anyway enough of me whinging about IT-bloody-V, Jonathan Pearce is the worst football commentator on TV bar none anyway. Ghana took the lead on 5 minutes with a tremendous finish from Kevin Prince Boateng. After that things were pretty even in the first half so US coach Bob Bradley performed his usual half time party trick in reshuffling his pack and was rewarded with a more dominant 2nd half performance from his team. So much was the USA's dominance that was perhaps a surprise that it took them until 62 minutes to equalise and then that they didn't score again. As it was, Landon Donovan took his opportunity from the penalty spot after Mensah's untidy tackle on Clint Demspey had presented it to him.
So we went to extra time and again Ghana started more brightly and were rewarded within just 3 minutes as Asamoah Gyan produced a stunning finish to leave Tim Howard helpless. This time there was no way back for the US, tired legs meant that they couldn't quite get themselves going forward as in the second half and Ghana survived without too many palpitations for coach Milovan Rajevac. Mind you, I perhaps didn't give extra time my 100% attention as I was attempting to put together a gas barbecue at the time...
