Ghana coach Milovan Rajevac said Uruguay had all the luck as the Black Stars' South Africa 2010 came to a heartbreaking end when they crashed out on penalties in Johannesburg.
After Diego Forlan cancelled out Sulley Muntari's opener, the match went into extra-time where Ghana were presented with a big chance to book a semi-final spot against the Netherlands.
But after Luis Suarez handled the ball on the line, Asamoah Gyan's resulting spot-kick smashed against the crossbar, leaving the game to be decided on penalties.
"There are no words to express what we feel. This is sport's injustice but I congratulate Uruguay tonight - they were the lucky ones," Rajevac said.
"All I can say is that this is football. At the end we had an 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." But Rajevac was in a pragmatic mood despite Suarez's intervention and Gyan's heartbreaking miss.
"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," he added. "It was a very difficult game for us because in the previous game we also played for 120 minutes and in the end we had the historic opportunity to reach the semi-final and we had the penalty."
