“Africas’s Glory, Ghana”

Making history is not exactly new to Egypt. This is a nation built on, and made legendary by, the extraordinary achievements of an ancient civilisation. It should hardly come as a surprise, therefore, that Egypt's hosting of the FIFA U-20 World Cup should bring about of a new chapter of football history.

Tournament records were rewritten, with more goals than ever before, and an unprecedented number of fans turning out to watch them. Yet, for Africa at least, Egypt 2009 will be not be remembered for any of these achievements. Instead, it will go down in history as the first time that a team from the mother continent came, saw and conquered all at FIFA's second-biggest tournament.

Ghana was the team to inscribe their name in folklore, and worthy winners they were too. Led by the tournament's top scorer and outstanding player, Dominic Adiyiah, the Black Satellites combined strength and skill to devastating effect, scoring 16 times en route to the final. Even when the goals finally dried up in the decider against Brazil, Sellas Tetteh's side merely took that as the signal to display another essential attribute of champions: character.

Holding the Brazilians at bay with ten men for 83 of the 120 minutes was impressive enough; finding the reserves of stamina and strength of mind to triumph in the subsequent penalty shoot-out was nothing short of heroic. The 70,000-strong crowd roared their acclaim, and rightly so. At a time when Africa has been thrust to the very centre of world football, Ghana - with the likes of Adiyiah, Andre Ayew and Ransford Osei all outstanding - had illustrated just why the continent is so confident about its future.

-Dany Park

 

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