Caleb Yirenkyi's Last-Minute Goal Secures Ghana's Victory Against Panama

Caleb Yirenkyi had been here before. Not the World Cup stage, not this level of noise and pressure, but this exact movement, this exact run, this exact finish.

He had rehearsed it for weeks.

On June 17, deep into stoppage time and with Ghana staring at a frustrating draw against Panama, the pattern finally clicked. The Black Stars won the ball back and, instead of panicking or simply clearing their lines, they went to work.

Antoine Semenyo carried it. Brandon Thomas-Asante joined in. The ball went wide, just as they had drawn it up on the training ground. And then, from deep, Yirenkyi arrived in the box, timing his surge to perfection and guiding home the move that gave Ghana a 1-0 win and three priceless World Cup points.

“That’s what we have been practicing since we started our preparation,” the teenager told reporters afterwards, matter-of-fact rather than boastful. Get it wide. Deliver. Flood the box with runners. Finish.

When Ghana regained possession in those dying seconds, he didn’t hesitate.

“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.”

A moment of instinct, built on repetition.

Queiroz’s imprint on a new Ghana

Behind that last-gasp winner sits the hard edge of Carlos Queiroz’s training sessions. The veteran coach has only just taken charge of this transitional Ghana side, but his stamp is already visible in the way they suffered, stayed compact, and still had the legs to surge at the death.

“That thing is the lessons,” Yirenkyi said of Queiroz’s approach. “He gives us great lessons. We do a lot of training and with a lot of intensity.”

Ghana needed every ounce of that conditioning. Expected to breeze past Panama, they instead spent long stretches under pressure, pinned back and scrapping to stay level. The game threatened to drift into the kind of stalemate that derails tournaments before they even get going.

They dug themselves out of trouble late, and a teenager supplied the escape route.

For Yirenkyi, the goal was not an isolated flash. It was his second in as many games for the Black Stars, following his strike against Wales in a pre-World Cup friendly earlier in the month. The arc of his rise has been steep.

Only last year, he was making his senior debut for Ghana in a 1-2 defeat to Nigeria at the Unity Cup. Now he is deciding World Cup matches.

Breakthrough season, bigger stage

At club level, the midfielder has been building quietly but relentlessly. With FC Nordsjælland, he has just come off a breakthrough campaign in Denmark: 30 league appearances, two goals, six assists, and a rapid promotion into one of the coach’s most trusted midfield options.

Those numbers tell part of the story. The rest is in how he carries himself in a Ghana shirt.

This is not a settled, peak-cycle national team. It is a blend of veterans nearing the end of their international journeys and a young core trying to drag the Black Stars into a new era. In that space, players like Yirenkyi either shrink or grow.

He has chosen the latter.

“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.”

The hierarchy still matters. The dressing room still leans on its elders. But the decisive moments are increasingly falling to fresh legs and fearless minds.

One goal, one idea

Ghana’s win over Panama was far from a statement of dominance. They suffered, they made mistakes, they invited pressure. Yet in the middle of that turbulence, a clear identity is trying to form.

Yirenkyi frames it simply.

“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.

“It’s everyone, helping each other out, and then, we all hope for the best, not just on myself, but for everyone, I think.

“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.”

For now, that goal is literal as well as symbolic. One goal against Panama, crafted on the training pitch, delivered in stoppage time by a teenager whose rise shows no sign of slowing.

If this is what Ghana’s new generation produces under pressure in June, what might they look like when the stakes climb even higher later in the tournament?