Former Black Stars captain, Asamoah Gyan has opened up about his penalty miss that denied Ghana an opportunity of becoming the first African country to play in the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup.
Asamoah Gyan after carrying Ghana and the rest of the continent on his back with his three goals in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, missed the decisive penalty with the last kick of the quarter final game against Uruguay.
Luis Suarez made himself an Africa's football number one enemy after handling Dominic Adiyah's stoppage-time goal bond header at the Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg but Gyan couldn't convert the penalty thus thanking the game to shootouts which Ghana lost.
Reacting to the incident 12 later years in an interview with FIFA, Asamoah Gyan started that he still doesn't know how his kick went up and he knew at that moment he had led the continent down.
“I was one of the top three best players in the world at the time. I was on top of the world, you know. I was confident. A day before the Uruguay game, I shot 20 penalties against our goalkeeper at training. I scored all 20."
“I had to cry [after the miss] because I thought I went from hero to zero. I let the whole continent, my country down. Like anytime I’m alone in a room, it just pops in my mind.”
“I was going to my left side of the goalkeeper. I saw him going to the left and then I saw him going to my right where I was shooting the ball. I didn’t know how the ball went up. Technically, there was something wrong. I didn’t have the right technique,” Asamoah Gyan told FIFA.
The Black Stars will face Uruguay again in the final game of Group H in the 2022 FIFA World Cup at the Al Wakrah Sports Complex on December 2.
Watch the latest edition of GhanaWeb Mundial show below
Asamoah Gyan is the all-time top scorer for Ghana with 51 goals