Asamoah Gyan Admits He Needs To Improve On Penalty Kicks

Gyan says he must improve on his penalty kicks

Ghana striker Asamoah Gyan admits he needs to polish his penalty kicks to ensure that he becomes the complete striker whose skills of goal scoring are not restricted.

The admission comes in the wake of crucial penalty misses for the Stars at both the last World Cup and last week’s international friendly away in South Korea.

“Even though I know my strength as a striker, I think I devote more attention to improving my penalty kicks, I have no doubts about what I can do but when it becomes so frequent, then it becomes boring and worrying,” he admitted in an interview.

He rejected the assertion that his inability to often convert penalty kicks was more of a psychological problem and said that might be attributed to a misjudgement on his part.

“ I’m a mentally strong person so it can’t be that I develop the cold feet when it comes to taking penalties. More often than not, I’m not forced to do it, I elect myself to take the kicks because I know I’m good at it, but I believe sometimes, it’s good to reflect on what happens and see what can be done to inmprove it.

“Thankfully, I’m able to motivate myself after such misses and I get back strongly into the game and sometimes even score, so I won’t say it’s a big problem. But definitely, if I have to do some extra work, to improve upon that aspect of my game why not. That’s why I’m a professional not an amateur,” he stressed.

In a friendly international against South Korea last week, the Sunderland striker missed yet another penalty kick and that has sent the 25-year-old marksman, rethinking.

Gyan is most remembered around the world for missing that decisive penalty against Uruguay at the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. But, he recovered and converted Ghana’s first penalty in the shoot-out of that same match which was eventually won by Uruguay.

Had Gyan converted the first penalty that he missed, Ghana would have qualified for the semi-finals of the tournament, the first time that an African side would have achieved that feat.

The miss against South Korea was the second within a year and again, he came back strongly to net the Stars’ goal in the 1-2 result in favour of the Koreans.