Asamoah Gyan
DGN TV’s sports analyst Francis Agbetsise has called on the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to reward Asamoah Gyan with a statue at the Accra Stadium after the 37year old striker announced his retirement from football last week.
Agbetsise believed Gyan has done tremendously well for Ghana football and therefore deserves a statue at the national stadium in Accra the capital of Ghana.
Speaking on DGN SPORTS LIVE, Agbetsise said “Build him a statue now, Asamoah Gyan has been absolutely amazing in the last 20 years, I am absolutely impressed with his performance for Ghana.
“Asamoah is by far the best striker in the history of Ghana football.”
Gyan has called time on his illustrious football career after setting unprecedented records on both local and international football scenes.
The 20-year career span has seen the prolific striker become the all-time African top goal scorer at the World Cup with six goals after representing Ghana in three different FIFA World Cup tournaments; 2006, 2010, and 2014.
He also took Ghana to two finals of the Africa Cup of Nations in 2010 and 2015 respectively.
Gyan is currently the all-time Ghanaian top goal scorer with 51 goals from 109 caps.
‘BabyJet’ as he is affectionately called had become a beacon of hope for Ghana football when he single-handedly put the flag of Ghana on the global map by becoming the player to score Ghana’s first goal at the FIFA World Cup in 2006 and it was all joy at Ghana’s first appearance at the global showpiece.
Despite all the mouth-watering achievements of the indomitable striker, Gyan had faced a couple of attacks or criticisms from Ghanaian football fans, one of those attacks was his penalty miss against Uruguay in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, a spot-kick which could have sent Ghana to the semi-finals of World Cup but unfortunately, Gyan missed it.
“I think Asamoah has done a lot for us as a country and deserves to be rewarded with a statue, everytime he puts on the Ghana jersey, you see high level of commitment, dedication, and patriotism,” said Agbetsise
He added “On the face value of what we have seen in the last 20years, Gyan is by far the best striker we have seen and he must be rewarded with a statue. Some people said he denied us the opportunity to reach the World Cup semis for the first time in history, but I think it is high time we forget about the penalty miss in South Africa, sometimes things like this happen in football, let’s forgive him for what happened in 2010 and celebrate his humongous contributions to the national team.”
The 2010, BBC African Footballer of the Year, has contributed his quota for global football, the workaholic striker has scored 228 goals from 455 matches in all competitions.