WORLD CUP 2010 QUARTER-FINAL Uruguay 1 Ghana 1 (aet, 1-1 after 90 minutes. Uruguay win 4-2 on penalties)A HUGELY partisan crowd got a thrilling finish to a tumultuous game here at Soccer City last night but not the result they wanted.

Ghana, and indeed Africa, had their World Cup dreams extinguished in a penalty shoot-out, with Sebastian Abreu coolly holding his nerve after others had lost theirs to strike his side’s winning spot kick and earn the Uruguayans a crack at the Dutch for a place in the final.

For the Ghanaians, Asamoah Gyan, will have the misfortune of going down in the history books as the one who really should have put his side into the last four.

Only moments before the end of extra-time, his side were awarded a penalty for a handball by Luis Suarez on the line and the striker might have wrapped things up there and then. As it turned out, though, Gyan struck the crossbar and, though Suarez was sent off, his opponent learned that sometimes crime really does pay.

It was, overall, a quite remarkable contest, one that both sides had chances to put beyond their opponents at one stage or another.

That the Africans grabbed the lead on the stroke of half-time through Sulley Muntari was no more than they deserved but it still represented the completion of a remarkable turnaround in a game that Uruguay had dominated for the first 15 minutes and looked, briefly, as though they might win easily.

The South Americans had launched one attack after another, with Diego Forlan apparently shaping up for another very big night and Suarez looking capable of capitalising on all his team-mate’s good work.

As a team, however, their play rarely flowed, with a succession of minor, sometimes niggling, fouls punctuating the game.

Their best chance fell to Suarez, who gathered a throw in at one stage, easily shrugged of Isaac Vorsah as he cut in from the left and then let fly from just inside the area. Richard Kingson, who didn’t always look convincing, did well to turn the shot over.

Still, it seemed almost a matter of time before the twice champions would put a first foot in the semi-finals. Then somehow, almost imperceptibly, their grip on things loosened, their opponents began to move the ball far more assuredly and the balance of the game began to shift.

As he had done in their second round match, Kevin Prince Boateng emerged as his team’s driving force in midfield, seizing upon every chance to power up the attacking side of his side’s game.

Vorsah should have scored from a close-range header following a corner from the right but it, like Gyan’s 20-yard shot moments later, flew inches wide of the target.

At the back, the Uruguayans looked utterly at sea, not helped by the loss of their skipper, Diego Lugano, who, having injured himself while getting up for a header at the other end, limped on for 15 minutes or so before Oscar Tabarez bowed to the inevitable and replaced him.

Like a prize fighter desperate for the bell, his side was hanging on and they looked to have just about weathered the storm and made it to the break when Muntari picked up possession while going nowhere a long way out, turned on his heels and blasted it home.

The noise inside the stadium, where most of the 84,017 strong crowd were fervently supporting the Africans, was deafening – in stark contrast to the silence that greeted Uruguay’s equaliser – a Forlan free straight to the top right-hand corner – 10 minutes after the break.

Uruguay might have nicked the goal they needed on a couple of occasions, with Suarez volleying wide after great work by Forlan.

Over the course of the evening Fernando Muslera, the Uruguayan goalkeeper, was just as unimposing as Kingson but he was rarely directly tested late on, despite Gyan’s tireless hunt for his fourth goal of the tournament.

When he was, in the very last seconds of the game, he was found wanting but Suarez provided the goal-line save required and was sent off for his trouble, only for Gyan to miss the one spot-kick, prompting the need for another 10.