9-man Ghana beat Chile on penalties in Kirin Cup
Ghana Black Stars brushed aside their below-par performance against Japan in the Kirin last week to put in a heroic show against South American counterparts Chile in the third-place playoff on Tuesday morning.
Coach Otto Addo reshuffled his squad, bringing KAS Eupen’s Abdul Manaf Nurudeen for the underfire Lawrence Ati-Zigi and also switched from a five-man defence to a back four made of Alidu Siedu, Edmund Addo, Daniel Amartey and Baba Rahman with Dennis Korsah and Andy Yiadom dropping to the bench alongside Ati-Zigi. Upfront, he ditched goalscorer against Japan, Jordan Ayew for Benjamin Tetteh while Christopher Antwi-Adjei made way for Fatau Issahaku in the starting lineup.
Ghana controlled the game and made good moves forward but was denied by a resilient defence and good goalkeeping coupled with a bit of profligacy but they surrendered the control of the ball when two men were sent off each for a second bookable offence.
First, it was France-based defender, Alidu Siedu who received his marching orders in the 66th minute before Wakaso Mubarak followed suit in the 77th minute to leave Otto Addo’s side down by two men.
Though Ghana lost control of the ball at that moment they remained descent and defended well to keep a clean sheet and end the 90 minutes barren.
Jordan Ayew, Mohammed Kudus and Abdul Fatawu Issahaku scored for Ghana during the penalty shootout while Tomas Alarcon, Ben Brereton Diaz and Gary Medel missed successive kicks after Ronnie Fernandez’s opener to hand over the win to the West Africans.
