The scoreline may have read in England's favour but the conversation drifting out of the Boston fog is not about a clinical England performance. No, w...
The scoreline may have read in England's favour but the conversation drifting out of the Boston fog is not about a clinical England performance. No, what has the pubs of Manchester and the terraces of Accra buzzing is a single, desperate moment. Ezri Konsa's last ditch lunge on Prince Adu has become a flashpoint. GoalZaza has been flooded with questions, the chief one being a simple, loaded query: should that have been a penaltyWe all know the drill. A ball played in behind a high line, a striker with a yard of space, and a defender who knows he has no right to win the ball fairly. Konsa, to his credit, is a fine reader of the game. But here, he was beaten. The laws of the game are clear on contact initiated by a defender who has no chance of playing the ball. My initial instinct, watching it live at full speed, was that Konsa got a sliver of the ball. But the replays tell a different story. They suggest he got man, and he got him just as Adu was shaping to shoot.The silence from the England camp is telling. They know they got away with one. In a World Cup group stage, these are the moments that can define a campaign. A penalty for Ghana, a potential red card for Konsa, and suddenly England's cushion looks wafer thin. Harry Maguire, watching from the bench, must have felt his heart skip a beat. This is the kind of squeaky bum time decision that can rattle a backline for the rest of the tournament. Football, as they say, is a game of fine margins, and England walked the tightrope without a safety net here.
