Niki Juusela howled 2010 – Luis Suarez and a hand error

Few people can ever become as unpopular in a foreign country as a football player Luis Suarez is in Ghana.

Hailing from Uruguay in South America, Suárez has been one of the most hated people in the West African cocoa nation for the past 12 years.

The reason is simple: Suárez took his country to the medal games of the FIFA World Cup in 2010, when the team knocked off Ghana in the quarterfinals. The way the match ended has left deep scars on Ghanaians.

Field player Suárez cleared the ball from Uruguay’s goal line with his hands in the last minute of overtime. He was shown a red card, but Ghana’s sure-fire winning goal turned into a penalty, which the team had yet to sink.

A warrior of misfortune Asamoah Gyan fired a shot that would shadow him for the rest of his life. The ball hit the top bar and didn’t go into the goal. Ghana lost the ensuing penalty shootout and was eliminated from the tournament.

– Suárez is playing volleyball! Ghana has a chance, here it comes! Ball to the top bar! Wow! Unfathomable match solution! Commentator Niki Juusela howled at that time in Yle’s commentary.

The party was cancelled

Ghanaians living in Finland Isaac Adjei28, and Emmanuel Amonoo37, can never forget the most crushing day in their country’s sporting history.

– It was absolutely horrible. It felt like losing one of your family members, says Adjei.

Amonoo lived in India at the time of the Games, but Adjei watched the Uruguay match at home in Ghana with his family. He tells how everything was ready for the big national celebration.

However, the drums, horns and other props remained unused. The celebrations turned into great silence throughout the country.

– After the match, we talked about it for hours. I don’t even remember what time it was, Adjei recalls.

The two suspect that as many as 80-90 percent of the people in soccer-mad Ghana watched the quarter-final. And those who didn’t watch listened to the events on the radio.

Ghana would have been the first African country in history to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup if Suárez had not intervened in the game with his hands.

Devil

Instead of a Cinderella story, the next day’s papers printed a picture of Suárez and his save. The Uruguayan dream-buster was forever etched in the minds of Ghanaians.

– If Ghanaians see Suárez on TV, they immediately turn it off. They never want to hear that name or see his face. He is the devil who came and ruined our race, Amonoo says.

Old wounds will be torn open again on Friday, when Ghana and Uruguay meet each other in the opening group of the World Cup in Qatar. The bet is a continuation place.

Suárez, now 35 years old, again disappointed the Ghanaians who saw him on the field.

– I don’t think people have forgiven him yet. I spoke to some of my friends who live in Ghana and they joked that if Suárez tries any tricks on Friday, they will buy tickets to Qatar and go and give him a back themselves, says Adjei.

In the end, however, Suárez managed to lead his team to the medal games, no matter how dubious it was. Amonoo has to admit that the intentional hand foul was a player’s move.

– Of course, it was smart. Suárez wanted to stay in the tournament, and he did everything he could to make it happen. His teammates were very proud of him, Amonoo states.

– Ghanaians hate Suárez, but on the other hand, I think that in Uruguay he is loved even more because of that, Adjei says.

Scapegoat

So what about Asamoah Gyan? The man who shot the spot after a hand foul into the top bar.

Unfortunately, his reputation is not much better in Ghana.

– Until the Games, Gyan had a reputation as a goal scorer in Ghana. We could always count on him. But when he failed that comma, people started blaming him alone for the fall. They started barking at him and even his family, says Amonoo.

Adjei points out that the offensive comments mostly come from those who follow football less.

The criticism as a whole is quite unreasonable. Everyone misses a penalty sometimes – for some, that moment just happens to be in a World Cup match.

– Gyan was just becoming a big star in Ghana, but after the World Cup that changed. I don’t know what he did to be able to keep going, Adjei thinks.

In Ghana, missing a point in almost any yard game is immediately associated with the events of the World Cup 2010.

– If you miss the comma, you get the nickname Asamoah Gyan. It’s in the back of every Ghanaian’s mind, says Amonoo.

The disappointment of the World Cup is so deeply ingrained in the minds of Ghanaians that Adjei and Amonoo both say they even had nightmares about Gyan’s penalty later in life.

World Cup dream

The quarter-finals is still the best achievement any African country has been able to achieve at the World Cup. In 2010, Ghana had the opportunity of all time to break that curse.

– They had such momentum that I was sure that if they had won the quarter-final, they would have gone all the way to the final. If not even to gold. When I watched the semi-final between Uruguay and Holland, I was sure Ghana would have won it, Amonoo vows.

The two are not quite as confident about this year’s team. Ghana’s team has a lot of players who are unknown to the general public.

On the other hand, the team has performed promisingly in the first group. In the pocket is a victory over South Korea and a loss against the famous Portugal.

Adjei singles out a player from the Ghanaian team that he is very familiar with. He and the 24-year-old Gideon Mensah are good friends, because they lived near each other as children and played on the same team until they were 14 years old.

Mensah, representing French AJ Auxerre, played 87 minutes against South Korea. Adjei was happy for his friend, but was surprised by one thing.

– I was surprised when he was a left winger. He used to always play as a winger or a winger, Adjei says.