Asamoah Gyan the talking point
The Baby Jet has truly landed
Posted: 2010-09-03 07:15
Among players of the senior Ghana team gathered in Johannesburg ahead of their 2010 Nations Cup qualifier against Swaziland, Asamoah Gyan's big money move to Sunderland is a major talking point.
And so is the belief that the man known to his national team mates and fans as the Baby Jet who has so often rescued them this season will thrive in a league so demanding it has broken the careers of many.
It has always been a risk signing players off the back of a major tournament and in paying 13million pounds for the Ghanaian striker, Sunderland have banked on a player whose potential has never been in question but whose delivery rate especially in front of goal has always left lingering doubts.
Last season was Gyan's most prolific. He hit 13 goals for Stade Rennes in the French league having spent one month away at the Nations Cup in Angola. In international football, he scored six of the nine goals that Ghana scored at the Nations Cup and the World Cup.
In international football, he has an impressive rate of a goal every two games. It is no wonder that within the Black Stars setting he is regarded by his colleagues as The Man.
"He is one of the best strikers you have around, a really really good finisher," gushes Fulham's John Paintsil. "It is really nice to see him in the premiership and knowing him I think he will do well."
Dede Ayew, one of Gyan's best mates in the Ghana side is bowled over by his mental strength." Many people on the outside know him as a a player, we who deal with him know him as the man whose got amazing mental strength. Look how he picked himself up after the penalty miss against Uruguay to score in the shootout. And we all remember the abuse he had to endure when Ghana hosted the Nations Cup two years ago. He has risen above that with admirable dignity."
If you believed the abuse Ayew refers to in January 2008, Gyan was the most worthless striker anywhere in the world even at a time when he still had a goal every two games for the Black Stars. So intense was it after some incredible misses against Namibia that he and his big brother Baffour, also a Black Stars striker packed their bags and threatened to abandon camp.
Injuries did not help matters too and Gyan as a result missed a chunk of the qualifiers for the 2010 Nations Cup as he battled to regain full fitness after an 8million Euro move from Udinese to Stade Rennes.
The reward for their careful medical attention which included sending a club doctor to travel with Gyan to Accra in the summer of 2009 paid off handsomely.
These days he plays with the airs of a man who knows what he is about and while the misses remain a part of his game, it is the goals we are noting him for.
In that sense Sunderland can expect some ride. On his day they will find a player who can score some incredible goals, one so full of confidence he tries the most difficult option when often a simple ball will do.
His goal against the USA at the second round of the World Cup in a game he had barely had any influence showed his growing streak as one of those players with the ability to step up and deliver the special when it was needed most.
He will celebrate them in style too. In addition to a footballing career that has turned him into a famous, but not necessary loved figure in Ghana, Gyan has tried his hands at music even though when you listen to his African girls' tracks, you know straight away it is a career that will not travel far.
The two songs that he has featured on so far are misses in a sense comparable to the way he has fumbled in front of goals in recent years. While he does score spectacular goals, he spurns great opportunities too and fans in England will have to get used to that.
His likely strike partner at Sunderland Darren Bent though will find a man willing to run himself into the ground for them, one terrific in aerial situations but above all a wonderful ball player.
At no point too, no matter how difficult it becomes will he let his head drop. In navigating the tough street football system of Ghana and enduring some of the most absurd abuse directed by his own fans, Gyan has mastered the art of simply shutting his ears to the critics and getting on with life.
And the reaction in Ghana after his move suggests there will be many urging him to do well and thrive in English football. It is a League so loved in Ghana, Sunderland games will mean a lot more these days that they ever have.
It will mean a lot to this proud nation too if Gyan can go anywhere close to what the last Ghanaian striker to play in the English Premiership did. Anthony Yeboah did not have a career with the national team in the manner that Gyan has managed at 24 years but he built a fantastic reputation as a world class striker in the Bundesliga and in Leeds when his goals in the mid-90s thrilled the Premiership.
Yeboah will be a hard act to follow but on the evidence of the last one year when he has grown from the derided mishit, to a World Cup star Gyan should give it a good crack. Especially with his admirable ability to just get on with life and enjoy his football no matter how loud the criticisms get.
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