USA 1 Ghana 2: Africans can continue to light up tournament

Ghana manager Milovan Rajevac believes the Black Stars' World Cup adventure is far from over after they reached their first quarter-final with a stunning victory against the USA.

Asamoah Gyan scored the winning goal after three minutes of extra time at the Royal Bafokeng stadium after Portsmouth's Kevin-Prince Boateng had put Ghana ahead, only to be pegged back by a Landon Donovan penalty after Fulham's Clint Dempsey was brought down in the area.

Ghana will now face Uruguay in the quarter-final and Rajevac said: "Ghana are now among the eight best teams in the world. This is fantastic. When we reached the final of the African Cup the boys learned how to compete.

"That is the most important thing and I now hope Ghana will go further.

"The whole world is watching these games. Everybody loves good football. Ghana has the support of the whole world because it is the only African country still playing at the World Cup."

It was a theme taken up by man of the match, Ghana midfielder Andre Ayew, who said: "We had to fight to the last second and we gave our all.

"We fought for the continent and for Ghana. We hope the whole African nation is proud.

"Everything is possible. We are very tired but we have five days rest and will focus for the next game against Uruguay.

"They have great strikers but if God is behind us anything is possible.

"We were disappointed there was no African team with us. We need to make the whole continent proud and we feel we have the whole continent behind us and that gives us energy."

Unfortunately, Ayew misses the Uruguay game because he picked up a second yellow card and Rajevac added: "This is a major problem for the Uruguay game. There are also a lot of injuries and a lot of work for the medical staff."

United States coach Bob Bradley blamed his side's tendency to lose early goals for their defeat and refused to say whether he would remain in charge of the side when his contract runs out in December.

He said: "I thought we had the chance to finish the game. But we went down early in extra time and we have done that one too many times.

"We hurt ourselves giving up the early goal again."