Mali scored two goals inside the final 15 minutes of their opening U20 World Cup Match at the Forsyth Bar Stadium in Dunedin, New Zealand, defeating CONCACAF Champions, Mexico by a 0-2 score line.
The first five minutes of this Group D match were very hetic as Mexico looked to strike quickly. Unfortunately, for all of the little half chances that they created in those opening moments, the finishing product was very poor as they wasted opportunity after opportunity. As the match wore on, Mali gained more confidence and even began to dominate possession a little bit.
In the 18th minute, however, Mexico got one of their best look on goal all day but were denied the opening breakthrough as Maïga cleared the ball off the line. Mali's goal keeper was finally tested with just a couple of minutes to go until halftime as he did excellently to deny a header from Alejandro Díaz. The Club America forward really should have placed his header better because anywhere else and Mexico goes up 1-0 right before the halftime interval.
It was very physical in the opening stages of the second half with no side being able to get a flow going with the referee blowing his whistle early and often. Then, the cards started to come out quickly. Hamidou Maïga got booked twice inside the space of five minutes and the African side were down to ten minutes with over an hour left to go in the match. But the match was level quickly as Diego Gama was shown a striaght red for elbowing dangerously high.
Minutes later, Óscar Bernal was sent off for taking down a Mali footballer at the edge of the area as this was his second booking of the day. From here on, it was Mali who were on the prowl, looking to snatch the three points and they took them with some brilliant work in their final third of the pitch. With 14 minutes left to go in the match, the Eagles struck for glory. Youssouf Koné delivered an excellent ball into the six yard box where his Ligue 1 teammate, Adama Traoré did very well to shift his body to redirect the ball into the back of the net with his head.
Les Aigles scored their second goal just three minutes later with some nice passing. In the end, Dieudonné Gbakle combined with Alassane Diallo before placing the ball perfectly into the bottom right hand corner of the net.
This result puts Mali in a great position to advance to the next round building up that goal differential just in case they have to be one the four best third placed teams left in the competition. Meanwhile, Mexico have some work to do now and have a tough test with Uruguay next time around and will have to shift the line up a tad because of those two red cards.