Caleb Yirenkyi's Winning Goal Secures Ghana's Victory Against Panama
Caleb Yirenkyi had been running on fumes by the time the ball dropped to him in the box. Ninety minutes gone, deep into stoppage time, a World Cup game against Panama drifting towards frustration. One more sprint, one more late run, one more finish.
He made it count.
Ghana’s teenage midfielder lashed in a 1-0 winner on June 17 to snatch three precious FIFA World Cup points, the decisive punch after the Black Stars had spent long stretches pinned back and under pressure. Panama had asked all the questions. Yirenkyi found the answer.
This was not a moment born out of chaos. It was rehearsal made real.
From a turnover in added time, Ghana sprang forward. Antoine Semenyo drove the ball into space, Brandon Thomas-Asante carried the move on, and then, right on cue, Yirenkyi arrived in the area to finish the move they have been drilling for weeks.
"That's what we have been practicing since we started our preparation," he told reporters, explaining the pattern that unlocked a stubborn game: get the ball wide, deliver into the box, time the runs. This time, he was the one on the end of it.
"When we won the ball back, I tried to just play forward and run for it and then hope to see what comes and then I got the ball in the box and I finished it."
The pressure had been building on Ghana rather than Panama for much of the contest. Expected to ease through, the Black Stars instead laboured. Sloppy phases on the ball invited trouble, and they “had to dig themselves out of a hole of their own creation” as the game ticked into its dying moments.
What bailed them out was the very thing new coach Carlos Queiroz has been drilling into this young squad: intensity, repetition, and clarity.
"That thing is the lessons. He gives us great lessons. We do a lot of training and with a lot of intensity," Yirenkyi said, crediting the demanding sessions that have sharpened Ghana’s transitions and hardened their mentality for World Cup pressure.
For Yirenkyi, the goal was not an isolated flash. It was his second in as many games for Ghana, following his strike against Wales in a pre-World Cup friendly earlier this month. The arc of his rise has been steep.
Only last year, he was making his senior debut for the Black Stars in a 1-2 defeat to Nigeria at the Unity Cup. At club level with FC Nordsjælland, he has just come off a breakthrough season in Denmark: 30 league appearances, two goals, six assists, and a rapid elevation into one of his coach’s most trusted midfield options.
Now, on the biggest stage, he is carrying that form into a World Cup side in transition.
This Ghana squad is a blend that feels almost like a handover ceremony in real time: veterans on their final laps, young legs sprinting into the future. Yirenkyi is firmly in the latter group, but he is quick to point to the older heads as the quiet engine behind their composure.
"We have great support around us," he said. "The older players help us very much as young players, and we just have to take the information in and then do our best, run for each other and then we hope for the best."
Against Panama, that ethos was visible in the way Ghana survived the rough spells. They suffered, regrouped, and then, when the chance came, they attacked together.
For Yirenkyi, it all comes back to the collective rhythm being built around Queiroz’s methods.
"We are just doing what we can do best each and every day, learn from each other, then from the coach, then from the people around us, and then we take it day by day," he said. "It's everyone, helping each other out, and then, we all hope for the best, not just on myself, but for everyone, I think."
The words are simple, but the conviction is clear. There is no sense of a youngster getting carried away with his own headlines. He speaks in “we”, not “I”.
"I'm very positive, not just me. My teammates, also, we are all just, we have one goal to do our best in this tournament, and I think that's what we've shown."
On a night when Ghana flirted with dropping points, it was that shared goal that dragged them over the line. One late press, one rehearsed pattern, one teenager arriving in the right place at the right time.
If this is what Yirenkyi produces at the start of his international journey, the real question is how far this new-look Ghana can go once the rehearsal stops and the World Cup truly catches fire.
