South Korea reached the knockout by scoring a goal in extra time: beat Portugal in a thrilling match; Hee-chan fired the decider
In the FIFA World Cup 2022, South Korea defeated Portugal 2-1 in a thrilling match. Korea’s Hwang Hee-chan scored the winning goal in the 90+1 minute. With this goal, Korea won the match and became the second team from Group H to advance to the pre-quarterfinals. Portugal had already qualified.
In another Group H match, Uruguay beat Ghana 2-0. But, even after this victory, Uruguay could not qualify by being third in the group. Ghana were eliminated from the tournament by finishing fourth in the group.
Portugal scored in the 5th minute
Portugal striker Ricardo Horta scored the goal in the 5th minute of the start of the match. Teammate De Dalot headed the ball towards Korea’s penalty box. He passed to team striker Ricardo Horta close to the box. Ricardo made control of the ball and sent the ball into the net.
Equal in 27th minute
After conceding a goal in the opening minute of the first half, Korea equalized in the 27th minute. Defender Kim Young-gwon, wearing the number 19 jersey, scored for them. Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo could not clear the ball from his corner. She hits the shot, but misses to Young-gwon. Gwon made no mistake here and scored the equaliser.
Decider came in extra time
After the score line was equal in the 27th minute, there was no goal in the match for 90 minutes. The assistant referee added 6 minutes of injury time. In the 90+1 minute after injury time, Hyung Sun of Korea headed the ball towards Portugal’s penalty box. He passed the ball to Hwang Hee-chan, the team’s striker, while dodging the opposition defenders. Hee-chan made no mistake here and sent the ball into the net to win the match for South Korea.
Portugal was ahead in a close fight
Group H saw a neck-and-neck fight between the two teams. Both the teams hit an equal 13 shots in the match, out of which 6 were on target. South Korea was able to convert 2 of these into goals, while Portugal could convert only one shot into the goal. During this, Portugal had 62% time ball possession in the match. They also took 5 corners, while Korea got only one.
Uruguay also had only 4 points
South Korea had to win the match at any cost to qualify for the knockout round. Also, they wanted Uruguay to win by a margin of no more than 2 goals. As it happened, Uruguay beat Ghana 2–0. At the same time, South Korea also won their match by a margin of one goal.
Both the teams had 4-4 points in the points table. But, South Korea qualified for the next round due to better fair play. In fact, during the group stage in the tournament, South Korea got fewer yellow cards than the Uruguayan team. That’s why he qualified by staying second above Uruguay in the points table.
