This could be an unforeseen and unbelievable loss for Japanese, but it’s true that Ghana has beaten them by one to zero in U-17 FIFA Women’s world cup to reach in the semis for the first time. Ghana beat their Japanese colleague in a nail biting match at Azerbaijan where Sherifatu Sumaila scored the only goal for Ghana in the 53rd minute to conceive a victory for them. This goal perhaps was the mistake of Japanese goalkeeper, coz he could not grab the low shot hit by Sumaila which could have been grabbed by him generally. Throughout the game, right from the beginning to the end, Japanese ruled the game, but 53rd minute goal changed the momentum into Ghana’s favor. With this win, Ghana aka Black Maidens have become the only African side to enter into the semis of a Women Word Cup in the history. This historic win takes them to Baku for their Semifinal clash with France. France has beaten Nigeria in a penalty shootout by 5 to 3 to reach in the semis.
More precisely, Ghana’s victory has come against a team which was the highest goal scorer in this tournament; perhaps, Japan did not concede even a single goal until this match. Being the pass masters, it was unimagined that Japanese will lost to an African team. But, on the other side, Ghana’s coach Mas-Ud Dramani was confident with his team’s strength and predicted this win well in advance. After the match, he said, “This game was very tactical. We scouted our opponents and the opponents scouted us. We tried to respect their strengths and we played to our own. We also spotted their weaknesses and our physical condition was the hallmark of our win.” Though, many credit Ghana’s victory to Japanese poor goalkeeping, yet victory is a victory and more importantly if it comes in a world cup. How can anyone forget brilliant goal saving effort from Ghana’s goalkeeper in the last moments? Nonetheless, Japan has become the first team to delay their first conceded goal until 364th minute – a new tournament record for them.
Even after scoring record 17 goals in the tournament without facing a single goal until quarterfinal, Japanese were the hot favorite to be seen in the semis, but Black Medens were also confident and determined to mark their first presence in the semis where they will compete another high ranking team France.