Ghana sealed their passage through to the semi-finals of the African Youth Championship with a hard-earned 2-0 victory over Rwanda in the crucial group A match on Saturday.
The win also ensures the Black Satellites one of the four tickets to the World Youth Championship later in the year to be hosted by Egypt as the AYC by extension serves as a qualifier to the World tournament.
Ransford Osei after scoring his first goal in the tournament in Ghana’s previous game - against Mali - hoped that his opening goal at the competition opened the floodgates for more.
And for the hero, it certainly did come at the Amahoro Stadium where the Israeli-based striker was on target twice to win the game for Ghana with both goals coming in the second half.
Ransford Osei now has three goals to his name at the competition.
Sellas Tetteh made two changes to his side bringing in Jonathan Mensah and Isaac Donkor for Philip Boampong and Abeiku Quansah.
The hosts started brightly in front of a packed house but their qualification dreams went up in smoke after an hour.
Ghana threatened but failed to find target although it was Rwandan goalkeeper, Ndayishimiye Jean Luc, who was equal to the task of stopping the Black Satellites from getting in front.
After 15 minutes of play, the hosts had their moments as they forced Ghana’s defence revolving around the central pair of Jonathan Mensah and Daniel Addo to work extra hard to deny them the opener.
Rwanda dictated the pace of the game till referee Fall Ousmane brought the half to a close.
Ghana came back from the recess and started off well but hardly made any goal attempts as David Addy picked the first yellow card for an unsporting behaviour.
With the game still goalless, Ghana scored the opener when Dominic Adiyah laid the ball into the path of Ransford Osei, who had seen lots of the ball on the afternoon.
Osei run with the ball into the box, followed by his marker and but managed to let fly a shot which beat Ndayishimiye Jean Luc in the 69th minute for the opener.
The goal did not break the resolve of the hosts and their fans entirely.
But 11 minutes later, Ghana did break them down finally as the second goal effectively killed their hopes of qualifying with Cameroon beating them to the other place after winning 3-0 over Mali in the other group A match.
Samuel Inkoom curled in a cross from the right side of attack to the far post and, Ransford Osei, unmarked directed his header, which bounced off the ground into the post.
Ghana could have wrapped the game with the third goal but Dominic Adiyah hesitated in the box as his attempted pass rather found an opponent.
The win secures Ghana a place in the last four as the Black Satellites finished top of group A with 7 points and are joined by Cameroon who ended the group campaign with 5.
Ghana line up:
Daniel Adjei, Samuel Inkoom, David Addy, Jonathan Mensah, Daniel Addo, Gladson Awaku, Isaac Donkor, Emmanuel Agyeman Badu, Dominic Adiyah, Ransford Osei and Andre Ayew.
Subs: Joseph Addo, Philip Boampong, Kassenu Ghandi, Godfred Rockson, Enoch Adu-Kofi, Latif Salifu, Abeiku Quansah