By Dennis Mirpuri
Week in, week out, I have monitored several Ghanaian news portals reporting on Black Stars captain Asamoah Gyan’s impressive scoring tally at Al Ain but maybe it’s also important to critically analyze the former Udinese forward’s competitive form in attack ahead of the 2014 World Cup, and I stress on the word competitive since the quality of opposition and defenders in the Arabian Gulf League cannot be compared to other main-stream European leagues, where the key players of Germany and Portugal ply their trade.
The 28-year-old has now scored 36 goals for Al Ain this season in all competitions and has managed to push the club to fourth place on the league table. Congratulations! I applaud him! But, how much effect will Gyan’s form in the UAE have on Ghana’s performance at the Brazil 2014 tournament, as the leader in the Black Stars attack?
Rewind the years back to 2011, when Asamoah Gyan joined Al Ain on a season long loan deal from Sunderland. He was in superb form in the English Premier League and moved to the UAE in September 2011 to become the top scorer with 22 goals, after which he signed a five-year-deal and stayed on to land another Goal-king prize with 31 goals in 2013. But, did his amazing scoring form at club level aid Ghana to blossom at the 2012 and 2013 Africa Cup of Nations?
At the Gabon and Equatorial Guinea 2012, Gyan scored only once at the Group stage in the 2-0 win over Mali and could not compete for the tournament’s Goal-king prize won by Emmanuel Mayuka, who had then come to the continental competition fresh from scoring 55 goals in 22 Swiss League appearances for Young Boys. In 2013, Gyan again ended the AFCON in South Africa with just one goal in six games, leaving Nigeria’s Emmanuel Emenike and Ghana midfielder Mubarak Wakaso to emerge as joint top scorers with 4 goals. It is only fair to ask why Asamoah Gyan, who scored 3 goals in 5 matches at the 2010 World Cup, went into these two AFCON competitions as the top scorer in the Arabian Gulf League and could still not bag more goals and push the Black Stars end the over 30-year wait for a trophy. The easiest statement of defence from an Asamoah Gyan fan could be, “he had just had a bad tournament.”
As subjective and as unfairly critical as this may sound, the fact is that Asamoah Gyan has settled very well in a mediocre league reserved for retirees, though its competing clubs pay good cash. The former Rennes and Sunderland striker scored from the penalty spot in stoppage time to hand Al Ain a 1-0 win over home side Al Wasl on Friday, taking his goals tally in the Arabian Gulf League to 29 in 26 appearances. Despite his impressive goals tally in the UAE again this season, I foresee Gyan’s situation affecting Ghana’s attack again, this time at the World Cup because he has practiced with UAE based defenders, who are of the lowest of quality, and would have to account for that choice when he faces back-liners of high repute like Germany’s Mats Hummels, Phillip Lahm, Jerome Boateng, Per Mertesacker, Holger Badstuber, Benedict Howodes and Portugal’s Rolando, Pepe, Fabio Coentrao, Ricardo Costa, Joao Pereira, Vitorino Antunes, Luiz Neto and Miguel Lopez, who all play for clubs in the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga, the French Ligue 1, the Russian Premier League, the Italian Serie A or the Spanish La Liga.
On this score, I wish to state that you can make all the noise about Asamoah Gyan’s laudable scoring form at Al Ain over the past three seasons but it will have little or no reflection on Ghana’s performance or progression at the 2014 World Cup. This is rather sad, because he is not only the Black Stars lead striker but the captain of the side.
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