Zongo Caucus of NDC UK and Ireland congratulates Black Stars for first victory against Panaman

The phone rang at half past midnight. No greeting, just a voice: “Why is Semenyo not starting centrally?” Someone on the other end laughed. Someone else cut in with a different formation entirely. This is the Ghanaian football experience, conducted in living rooms across London while a nation on the other side of the Atlantic held its breath.

The first half gave everyone something to worry about. Ghana barely existed going forward. Carlos Queiroz’s side registered just one attempt in the opening 45 minutes, matching the lowest first-half tally of any team at this World Cup. Panama, organised and purposeful, controlled possession from the outset, finishing the half with 64 percent of the ball and dictating the tempo for long stretches. The phones were busy again. The group chats were louder than the commentary.

What changed the match was audacity from the bench. In the 57th minute, Abdul Fatawu and Brandon Thomas-Asante replaced Ernest Nuamah and Kamaldeen Sulemana, injecting pace into an attack that had been static. Thomas-Asante, fresh from helping Coventry City back to the Premier League, proved to be the game-changer. Antoine Semenyo had been Ghana’s most consistent presence throughout, knitting combinations and pressing with genuine intent. When it mattered most, he released Thomas-Asante down the left, whose cross found Caleb Yirenkyi to stab home at the near post. At 20 years and 153 days old, Yirenkyi became the second-youngest player to score for Ghana at a World Cup.

The final minutes were not for the faint-hearted. Panama’s goalkeeper Mosquera charged forward for a late free-kick, winning the header, with the ball dropping for Díaz, only for substitute goalkeeper Benjamin Asare to gather sharply before bodies piled in. Asare, thrown in after Lawrence Ati Zigi departed through injury at half time, produced three important saves to preserve a clean sheet that felt improbable until the final whistle.

From a referee’s perspective, the match was physically contested without descending into something uglier. Yirenkyi himself had received a yellow card in the 16th minute. The closing moments brought flaring tempers and further cards, though no decision fundamentally altered the outcome. The game was won by quality, not controversy.

At Toronto Stadium, the result carried more than football significance. Her Excellency Vice President Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang was present at the ground alongside Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin, and Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie. Her Excellency had visited the squad at their hotel the day before, a gesture that communicated something plainly: this team matters to the state, and the state showed up. That presence, at midnight West African time and in the chill of a Toronto evening, was patriotism enacted rather than performed.

Football does something that politics rarely manages. It makes thirty over million people feel the same thing at the same time. When Yirenkyi stabbed that ball over the line in the 95th minute, the phone calls stopped mid-sentence. For a few seconds, everyone was simply Ghanaian. The Zongo Caucus of NDC UK and Ireland joins the entire nation, home and abroad, in congratulating the Black Stars for their victory over Panama. The rest of the group stage begins now.

Zongo Caucus Coordinator,
NDC UK and Ireland Chapter

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