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The chaotic 2010 quarter-final between Uruguay and Ghana was a World Cup classic. The Black Stars were the final African side left in the tournament and drew a crowd of more than 84,000 in Johannesburg’s Soccer City, who saw Sully Muntari and Diego Forlan trade goals before the tie headed into extra time.
Ghana looked set to become the first African side to reach the final four of a World Cup when Luis Suarez saved the ball on the line with his hand, resulting in a penalty and red card in the final minutes of extra time.
This desperate gamble would pay off though, as Asamoah Gyan blasted the penalty onto the bar and the South American’s win the resulting shootout, in a match which the former Sunderland and Udinese star has never forgotten.
Asamoah Gyan on Ghana’s heartbreaking World Cup 2010 exit
“The team were in top shape for that quarter-final in Johannesburg, and our confidence was very, very high,” Gyan tells FourFourTwo as he reflects on that game plus the impact it had on both his career and the Black Stars. “It was a tough game – Sulley Muntari scored for us from 35 yards just before half-time, but Uruguay came back and equalised through Diego Forlan. We dominated the game, but it went to extra time.
“Then, with no time remaining on the clock after 120 minutes, John Paintsil put a free-kick into the box. There was a scramble, Luis Suarez cleared one shot with his feet, then he stuck his hand out and slapped Dominic Adiyiah’s header away before it crossed the goal-line. If I had been Suarez, I would have done the same thing to save my country. The ball was going in, and he handled it to keep his team in the game.
“He was sent off, then I stepped up for the penalty, in the final seconds of the match. It would have been very fair for us to win that game, but unfortunately I didn’t convert – my penalty hit the crossbar. For a while, that became the most famous penalty in the world – one that everybody was talking about.
“But it’s part of the game. Life goes on. Soon, I had to take another one – I was Ghana’s first player to take a penalty in the shootout, and I scored. I remember when I joined Sunderland from Rennes two months later, for a club-record fee of £13 million, the manager Steve Bruce said, “You have balls – missing a crucial penalty, then coming back to score the first one in the shootout, that’s the main reason why I signed you.
“Even though I lost something that night – sadly, we lost that penalty shootout – I also achieved something. It made me stronger, and it opened doors for me. We didn’t become the first African side to reach the World Cup semi-finals – instead, Morocco were the ones who finally broke that ceiling in 2022 – but we were very proud of ourselves for what we did in South Africa.
“Ghana had an amazing World Cup, and personally I still had an amazing tournament. It was one of the most historic World Cups we’ve ever been to, and everybody still talks about it. We created a legacy.
“Luis Suarez became a hero in Uruguay because he saved his team. Sometimes, people who don’t understand Suarez hate him for what he did, but looking back now, I don’t blame him for it. He just did what he had to do to save his country from being knocked out.”
“For a while, I was naive, I was thinking about what people were saying about me after my penalty miss, so I hated him for a bit, too. But I’m more mature now. Later, I sat down and understood he did the right thing for his country. He’s a great player who’s had a great career, and has achieved a lot of different things in football.
“Psychologically though, my penalty miss does still pain me. Sometimes, when I’m alone and I look back, I feel that I let Africa down, that I let my country down. After that quarter-final, people were disappointed and pained about my miss.
“Sometimes though, people will still abuse me on social media – whenever I post a tweet, or a story on Instagram, I’ll see thousands of people praising me, and a couple of people who bring up that penalty miss against Uruguay. I still feel like people haven’t forgotten about it, so I just have to deal with it. Maybe I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
