Ghana coach Milovan Rajevac was magnanimous in defeat after seeing his Ghana team eliminated from the World in heartbreaking circumstances on Friday night.

A handball from Luis Suarez in the dying seconds of extra time gave Asamoah Gyan the chance to make Ghana the first African team to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup, but he could only strike the bar.

That meant the quarter-final would be decided on penalties and though Gyan showed great courage to take and score the first spot-kick, John Mensah and Dominic Adiyiah were both denied by Fernando Muslera as Uruguay progressed to face the Netherlands.

But despite the manner of Suarez's intervention and Gyan's evident disappointment - when he could barely stand as he succumbed to a flood of tears after Sebastian Abreu's winning penalty - Rajevac was in pragmatic mood.

"There are no words to express what we feel," Rajevac said. "This is sport's injustice but I congratulate Uruguay tonight - they were the lucky ones. All I can say is that this is football.

"At the end, we had a historic opportunity to reach the semi-final - we had a penalty but you saw it all. The opponents had the psychological advantage in the shoot-out. Everything happened so fast.

"We really had big support and it would have been a fairytale if it ended well for us, but I would like to congratulate Uruguay on reaching the semi-finals.

"I'm very proud. We managed to achieve a great result and the whole of Africa supported us. We didn't deserve to lose in such a way and it's difficult to talk about it at the moment. We had bad luck that's all I can say."

Credit: soccernet.espn.go.com