There was a part of every Ghanaian football fan that died when Asamoah Gyan decided to head towards the United Arab Emirates on loan three years ago.
At 25, 'Baby Jet' was a young star on the rise, a future stocked with bright possibilities beckoning. After enduring years of doubt and rejection from Ghana's ever-demanding football fandom, his performances at Sunderland made him look like he was finally on the path to greatness that many had predicted when he first burst onto the scene as a teenager.
And so, when the news broke, public reaction was expectedly laced with deep disappointment. Many wrote off his career almost immediately: he had sold himself short and backed down on his ambitions like a coward; the pressure that awaited him at the top was raging and he had chosen the easy way out.
Most of his admirers defected to critics, his fans haters. What he did was unforgivable. To them, it was quite simple: Gyan had sold off his future for money – reportedly $200,000 per week without tax – and any other interpretation was just, well, crap.
They decided to turn their back on him, just as he had turned his back on arguably the world's biggest league. He had kissed the big-time goodbye and was set to fall out of the radar and consciousness of many. They didn't care about him anymore because he had, to them, proven that he wasn't a serious footballer.
It became personal, with people becoming emotionally attached to the topic. It looked like an abusive relationship: it hurt them that Gyan was being that stubborn about his decision, and they vowed to hate him and everything else he would achieve thereon, but deep down, they knew it was all because they loved him.
To them, he had taken a careless, senseless dive into an abyss of obscurity and mediocrity and it served him right that he was going to be on his own. But they couldn't help but keep an eye on him.
And so, as they secretly watched with disapproving and condescending eyes, Gyan flourished, perfecting his craft. Scoring, scoring and scoring.
In his first season, he scored 22 league goals in 18 games and was named top scorer as his club Al Ain became champions.
The next season, he made his move permanent and repeated the feat, only this time, he did it better: he smashed the UAE league record by bagging 31 goals in 22 games. This season, Gyan has scored 28 league goals in 25 matches, 40 goals in 38 matches across all competitions.
The 28-year-old has not even completed a third season yet, but his all time count reads: 99 goals in 91 games, only a single goal from the great century and Arabian immortality.
In the last three years, Gyan has scored more goals than he'd ever scored in all eight years of his career prior to. He has transformed into a beast helplessly hooked on goals. Back in Ghana, fans are having none of that, though. He scores so many because it's a 'Mickey Mouse League', they say. But to Arabian football fans, he's rare gem. A genius. A god.
From a Ghanaian perspective, Gyan might never get enough respect and credit for the amazing things he does week in week out in the UAE, but the truth that many cannot run away from, is the fact that his stay there has benefited Ghana. Forget about the disputed standard of the Arabian Gulf League - goals are goals everywhere.
What Gyan's quotidian routine of scoring has done is that it has embedded goalscoring in his subconscious and grown his confidence massively. Sticking the ball at the back of the net is now an effortless art that is almost second nature to him.
The facts don't lie: Gyan has scored 13 of his 39 international goals for Ghana during his time in the UAE, spanning 23 games: an average of a goal per two games. Last year, he scored 11 times in 15 games – six in six World Cup qualifiers – as he capped his most prolific international year yet by becoming Ghana's all time top scorer.
This might not have been the Ghanaian football fan's ultimate dream for their captain's career, but he is achieving and enjoying himself whilst making very good money too.
He might be tucked away from the floodlights of 'top level' football, but there is no denying that the status quo has been a win-win for himself and his nation.
Source: The Telegraph