Soccer News of Thursday, 29 June 2006

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Goalkeeper Kingston: Worlds Best?

Ghana goalkeeper made most number of saves

The 'Black Stars' World Cup dream may have come to an end, but at the conclusion of second round of the tournament, Ghana keeper Richard Kingson leads the list of top goal-savers.

Kingson has made 22 saves in his four matches, followed by Joao Ricardo of Angola and Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi of Japan, with 21 saves each in three games. However, while Kingson and Kawaguchi has conceded six and seven goals, respectively, Joao Ricardo has let in only two.

In respect of saves made, goalkeepers of three quarter-final reaching teams feature in the top ten -- Italy's Gianluigi Buffon and Portugal's Ricardo (16 saves each) and Brazil's Dida (15). To their credit, all of them conceded just one goal each in their four matches.

So far, 132 goals have been scored in the tournament and Argentina, Brazil and Germany have each netted ten while conceding two, one and two, respectively.

Switzerland, which bowed out of the tournment after a second-round defeat on penalties to Ukraine, committed the largest number of tackles -- 109, followed by Brazil (99) and Portugal (96).