Hearts beat Togolese side in a friendly

Accra, March 14, GNA - Accra Hearts of Oak on Sunday managed a hard fought victory over their Togolese counterparts, AS Douane 2-1 in an international friendly match played at the Accra Sports Stadium. The friendly match was to prepare the two teams for their respective second round matches next weekend in the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions league competition.

In spite of Hearts victory, the match was not as exciting as the fans expected especially after the homesters had managed a goalless drawn game against Stade de Malien of Mali in Bamako last week.

It was the visitors who drew the fist blood in the 25th minute through Saibu Badassou, when he flicked a headed cross from Albert Basta, a former player of Liberty Professionals to open the scores for the day.

Hearts struggled to put their act together in order to get the equaliser, but there was no coordination in their build up to get the desired results.

The stadium was however brought alive when Dan Quaye in one of his moves to join the attack was pushed down by Sumaila Atteoudeyi in the 44th minute in their goal area for which referee Justus Agbeko rightly whistled for a penalty in favour of Hearts.

Abdul Samed converted the kick for Hearts equaliser a minute later to end the first half.

The Togolese on resumption of the second half, took dominance of the game and pilled pressure on Hearts but they hardly put Sammy Adjei in goal for Hearts to test as the defence thwarted most of their moves. However, as the game wore on it was apparent fatigue was showing in the play of the visitors as they allowed Hearts to win most of 50-50 balls following the introduction of Eric Nyarko and Wisdom Abbey into the Hearts set up.

This changes paid off for Hearts when in the 67th minute Quaye again beat an offside trap to deliver a cross into the goal area of Douane which Lawrence Adjei blasted off a powerful shot into the roof of the net for the match winner.

Hearts maintained the pressure on the visitors in search of more goals in the dying minutes of the game but it never came their way even after two minutes of added on time.