GHANA coach Milovan Rajevac was surprisingly pleased after his side threw away the chance to take charge of Group D with a 1-1 draw against 10-man Australia today.
To see Socceroos fans watch the game at FanFest...
The Black Stars had a one-player advantage for almost 70 minutes at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium after Harry Kewell was sent off midway through the first half.
Brett Holman had given the Socceroos an 11th-minute advantage in Rustenburg, but his side were then dealt a blow after his fellow forward saw red for using his arm to keep out a certain goal for Jonathan Mensah after 23 minutes.
Ghana searched for a winner but it was Pim Verbeek's side that looked the more likely to score as Scott Chipperfield and Luke Wilkshire were denied by Richard Kingson in the second half.
Rajevac was content with the result, despite facing a potential knockout match with Germany in their last game.
He said: "The result is quite good because we have four points now.
"We will see how things go against Germany. Even if we had won, the last match would still have been very important.
"You see, there is no game won in advance at the World Cup and we can regret our missed chances today, but this is football.
"I'm saying again, we would have been in the same situation even if we had won and had six points.
"To a certain point, Australia now have got themselves more involved and I think Serbia will also be playing Australia for the result, so there are many different combinations.
"We are still very much in it and I am not unhappy with the final result."
One explanation for his satisfaction could be because his side came into the game without defenders Isaac Vorsah and captain John Mensah - the centre-back pair that blanked out Serbia in the opening match.
Rajevac added: "It was a game we had quite a bit of difficulty with before hand because two players couldn't be there on the pitch today. So instead of them we had two young players.
"We had a bad start during the first 15 minutes when we conceded a goal. But after that we started to fight for the result.
"We had a player more than Australia. We tried to score a second goal, but we didn't manage. We had quite a lot of opportunities but just couldn't get the breakthrough because they played very well, so congratulations to them."
To see Socceroos fans watch the game at FanFest...
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