BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. - Patrick Nyarko doesn’t seem to be the gloating type.
Even though the Fire’s Ghanaian winger had more than a few Americans (including one World Cup veteran in Brian McBride) at his disposal, the classy Nyarko declined to brag to any of his American teammates about Ghana’s 2-1, Round of 16 victory over the United States.
“I remained calm for the buildup to the game and I still remain calm,” Nyarko said on Sunday. “All of the Americans [on the Fire] were pretty much good sports, they came to me, congratulated me and I was extremely happy with the win.”
Nyarko, who correctly predicted the final score of the US vs Ghana match last Thursday, said he thought his countrymen did very well to advance past the Americans.
“I thought we were defending very well,” Nyarko said. “The guys did extremely well to pull it off. The U.S. is an extremely tough team, especially when they’re down, but we were able to scrape a win and hopefully we can jump another step and go to semifinal.”
Ghana will have to get past Uruguay if they’re to become the first African team to ever advance beyond the quarterfinal stage. The Black Stars will take on the South American side on Friday and they’ll need another strong defensive effort to stop Uruguay’s dangerous forward duo of Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez.
“Obviously Uruguay is very, very tough team,” Nyarko said. “I’ve seen them play top teams and they’ve done well so it’s not going to be an easy game but hey, as they kept saying in the buildup to the US game, Ghana is really unpredictable. I mean against Australia [facing a 10 men] we did nothing and then we kept the ball so well against the US. We never know. It’s a very winnable game; it’s Uruguay not Argentina. Even though we respect them, we feel we can go ahead and beat them.”
