Carlos Queiroz didn’t waste any time shutting down the injury panic around Antoine Semenyo. The Manchester City winger went down late in Ghana’s 2-1 loss to Croatia on Saturday, grabbing at his ankle inside the box and causing a brief but noticeable moment of concern for a Black Stars team already dealing with a disappointing result.
Semenyo received treatment on the field, limped off, and then somehow finished the match. That alone told most people it probably wasn’t serious. Queiroz confirmed as much after the final whistle.
“No, it’s just a knock, twisted a little bit the ankle,” Queiroz told reporters. No MRI. No grim prognosis. Just a tweak.
The injury update is a small relief for Ghana, who now sit third in Group L after the loss in Philadelphia. Petar Sucic and Nikola Vlasic scored for Croatia, with Derrick Luckassen providing the Ghana equalizer that ultimately didn’t hold. Croatia’s first two goals, Queiroz noted, came far too easy.
“Croatia scored two goals, two easy goals. Much too easy, the way they scored,” he said. “When you score one more goal than the opponent, you have the merit to win the game. Simple like that. It means we make one more mistake than the opponent, and when you make one more mistake than the opponent, that is it.”
Semenyo is expected to be available for the round of 32. That’s the good news. The bad news is Ghana’s path out of the group just got steeper. They controlled stretches of the game but couldn’t keep Croatia from finding the back of the net when it mattered.
Queiroz didn’t sugarcoat the performance. He basically said his team beat themselves. Two soft goals. One missed assignment here, one slow reaction there. Against a veteran Croatia side, that kind of margin for error disappears fast.
Ghana still controls their own fate if they can win their next group match, but they’ll need a sharper start and a healthier Semenyo to make that happen. For now, the knock on the ankle is just a knock. The real pain is the standings.
Leave a Comment