Assifuah in hunt for top scorer’s prize

Ghana’s Ebenezer Assifuah is following in the footsteps of his Black Satellites predecessors as he joins the race for the goal king or top scorer award at the FIFA Under-20 World Cup which enters the semi-finals today.

Assifuah, who has featured in all of Ghana’s games except the one against Spain, has scored four goals — a goal each in the games against USA and Portugal as well as a brace in last Sunday’s game against Chile, notching the all -important winning goal in the 120th minute of the game.

There are two more matches to be played by the Satellites, either as winners of the semi-finals or losers and Assifuah could be nearing Dominic Adiyiah’s scoring record in 2009.

In the 2009 competition in Egypt, Adiyiah scored a total of eight goals to win the top scorer award in addition to adjudged the tournament’s best player.

Interestingly, Adiyiah also scored two goals in their 2-1 win in the quarter-final match against South Korea on October 9.

While the pace and skilled striker is happy with his scoring exploits in Turkey, and is already looking ahead to the semi-final clash with France in Bursa, he is also worried about the way they have let in goals.

“If we start believing we can allow ourselves to fall behind again, we’d be completely wrong. We’ve used up all our luck. There’s no way we can keep on conceding goals and let our opponents to take the lead,” he told FIFA.com.

Assifuah was cautious about his team-mates’ wild celebrations in the depths of the stadium, but his undoubted confidence were shot through with realism: “We can win the World Cup, but things have to change in terms of letting in goals.”

With the strong contenders with five goals — Portugal’s Bruma and Spain’s Jese — out of the competition, Assifuah will have to challenge Uruguay’s Nicolas Lopez for the coveted award.

Lopez has scored five goals and is likely to feature in this evening’s semi-final match against Iraq.

Graphic Sports/Ghana