I’ve officially returned to take penalties for Black Stars – Asamoah Gyan

• Posted on July 11, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Black Stars Captain Asamoah Gyan has insisted he was not going to give up taking penalties for the Black Stars, until he was able to break the jinx of ‘miss kicks’ after a five year break.

Announcing he has officially returned to take penalties for the team, the 31-year-old said he would only be fulfilled with his football career until he was able to break that jinx of ‘miss kicks’.

Gyan, noted for miss kicking crucial penalties for the Black Stars in 2012 decided to stay away from spot kicks for the national team. This, he explained followed an agreement with his late mother, who felt fans were over abusing him for the miss kicks.

At the 2010 World Cup tournament in South Africa, Gyan missed a crucial penalty kick with Uruguay that denied Ghana the opportunity to progress in the tournament. In 2012 he missed another crucial one against Zambia.

During their 2-1 defeat to USA in an international friendly game in Connecticut on July 1, he however surprisingly stepped forward to take a spot kick, and once more, he failed to transform it just like against Uruguay in 2010 and Zambia in 2012.

Ironically however, he does well with spot kicks when he plays for the club side.

In a television interview with Kwabena Yeboah on GTV Monday night, Gyan said he has decided to step forward and be able to get over and “erase” that jinx.

He said the USA match being a friendly would have been a better re-start to breaking that jinx and that was why he stepped forwarding especially as he had been able to score all nine penalties during the training session.

Asked if he was going to continue kicking, Gyan said “definitely, because in my football career this is the only challenge for me right now, I think I have had a good career, I’ve had a successful career, everything that I want in the game, I’ve got it, so this is the only challenge that I need to erase and I know I’m gonna do it. I think it’s confirmed now, its official.”

“Right now, Andre [Dede Ayew] is scoring, Andre is the first penalty taker of the team and he knows it that I can take, so we have to decide on the field but right now, I have to erase that thing, people might disagree but we will see.”

“It is something that we need to learn. As I always say, I am strong mentally, I need to just step up.”

“In the American game, I wanted to break that jinx and it didn’t work out, it doesn’t mean I am done. Because I know how to do it,” he said.

-Graphic