Portugal 2, Ghana 1: Ronaldo finally gets a win, but it means nothing

Well, that was not the end Portugal was hoping for: They did not manage to escape the Group of Death, despite beating Ghana 2-1 on Thursday in their final match of the tournament. The Americans took second place in Group G, despite losing 1-0 to Germany. Goodbye, Portugal.

The Goals

OWN GOAL! John Boye (GHA), 31 min.: This kind of summed up Ghana’s World Cup campaign. Defender John Boye accidentally put it in his own net, and according to the broadcast team, they announced that he scored his first goal over the PA. Awkward.

GOAL! Asamoyah Gyan (GHA), 57 min. If they were only going to score one goal this match, they definitely made sure it looked good.

GOAL! Cristiano Ronaldo (POR), 80 min. His first World Cup goal of the tournament will be his last. 

The (near) Goals

CLOSE! Cristiano Ronaldo (POR), 5 min: This looked like it was going to be a goal, but it just skimmed the crossbar. Maybe Ronaldo’s new hair threw off his equilibrium.

SAVE! Fatau Dauda (GHA), 18 min. The ‘keeper makes an impressive save on the Ronaldo header after a perfect setup by Joao Pereira.

Man of the Match

Ronaldo was close to scoring at least four goals on Thursday, if it wasn’t for Dauda/that pesky crossbar. He was the only one that made a difference on the pitch — all while playing hurt.

The Controversy

The World Cup was nothing but trouble for this Ghana squad. At first, the football federation was accused of match-fixing - but for later friendlies, not the World Cup. Still, incredibly suspect. Then, it wasn’t even clear if they would be playing this game against Portugal. The team threatened to boycott because they had not been paid since arriving in Brazil. To rectify the situation, Ghana flew in $3 million in cash on Wednesday.

So, it looked like the crisis was averted. But no, there was still more going wrong for Ghana. Even though they weren’t going to play in the final game anyway, the team suspended Sulley Muntari and Kevin-Prince Boateng for two separate incidents that both involved fighting. Muntari’s punishment was because of a “unprovoked physical attack on an executive committee member of the GFA and a management member of the Black Stars, Mr. Moses Armah” on Tuesday. Boateng was kicked off for "vulgar verbal insults targeted at coach Kwesi Appiah" and then later failed to show remorse. These might be considered isolated problems, but still a distraction for the rest of the players on that team.

The Takeaway

Germany beat the U.S. 1-0, but the Americans still moved on in Group G because of goal differential, so this game was mostly meaningless. 

Ronaldo is still Ronaldo, although he was hampered by a knee injury during this campaign, and did not look his best at times. He also didn’t even think that his own team would win the World Cup. This is how the Group of Death ends.

Stray Thoughts

RIP Portugal.

RIP Ghana money plane

RIP Cristiano Ronaldo daily hair updates.

Sorry, Beto. He wanted to stay in the game, but hurt his groin. He was mad when the team decided to pull him, and let out his frustrations/sad feelings on the bench.