Finalists in 2018 and semi-finalists four years later, Croatia carried the greater threat in the first half and went close to taking the lead on 17 minutes, when Vlasic’s long-range drive grazed the outside of goalkeeper Benjamin Asare’s right-hand post.<\/p>\n
But Dalic’s team took a richly deserved lead when Inter Milan midfielder Sucic collected Mateo Kovacic’s pass before arrowing a low, right-footed drive through Luckassen’s legs and into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n
Manchester City winger Antoine Semenyo dragged a low shot narrowly wide of the far post late in the first half, but it would have been a scarcely deserved equaliser for Carlos Quieroz’s side, who failed to muster a first-half shot on target for the third game in succession.<\/p>\n
However, the Black Stars appeared revitalised by the half-time introduction of Leicester City winger Abdul Fatawu, who flashed a powerful shot narrowly over the bar early in the second half.<\/p>\n
Ghana were rewarded for their improved second-half showing when Luckassen headed home Ernest Nuamah’s delivery \u2013 a goal which was awarded by the video assistant referee following a near four-minute check for offside.<\/p>\n
Kwasi Sibo was in an offside position from Nuamah’s cross, but on-field official Drew Fischer eventually informed the crowd that the Ghana number eight was not interfering with play when the ball was struck and gave the goal.<\/p>\n
The momentum appeared to be with Ghana as the game entered the final 10 minutes, but Vlasic nodded home Luka Modric’s delivery to earn Croatia their second Group L victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finalists in 2018 and semi-finalists four years later, Croatia carried the greater threat in the first half and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-661938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}