Come again Gyan? This was not dying for a nation

Ghana lost to Portugal on Thursday afternoon to bring their 2014 FIFA World Cup participation to a premature end relative to their previous other two involvement in the competition.

Prior to the game, a serious contender of what could have been “The Best Reality Show 2014” had any TV Station gathered the courage to secure the rights of the Black Stars camping befell the nation.

First of all, a promised boycott of the final group game against Portugal had the players not received their appearance payment in cash. So the money was sent, a whopping amount of about three million dollars on a chartered plane to Brazil.

The sight of one of the Black Stars players fervently kissing his money with passionate enthusiasm made football fans across the nation believe that all was well after the payments had been made.

Only to hear after a few winding of the clock's hand that two players had been kicked out of the Black Stars camp. One player for using vulgar language on head coach Dr. James Kwesi Appiah and the other, for physically attacking an FA committee member.

As lenient as these writings may have appeared to deliver the message, the English language lacks the words to fully capture depth and complexity of the scenes that actually occurred at the Black Stars camp. Disgraceful will be gargantuanly understating it.

That is why I find captain Asamoah Gyan’s words minutes after the loss to Portugal implausibly unrealistic and very improbable to be believed.

The Al Ain man followed the stereotypical cliché of a post-match interview with the words:

“We’ve got young quality players that can come back strongly and die for the nation again.”

The first part of his talk about the quality young players cannot be entirely ruled out, but die for the nation AGAIN? Please come again Gyan?

The Encarta Dictionary defines again as: at another time or on another occasion repeating what happened or had been done before. Or simply put, as before.

This campaign at the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament was not the Black Stars dying for their nation and that makes Gyan’s statement superfluously fictitious.

Every single player that went to the FIFA World Cup in Brazil had a 99.99999 percent chance of returning alive because they went to play football not to stop a war.

The other remaining percentage is the probability of anybody dying anywhere at any given point in time.

Gyan’s dying for the nation talk was figurative but does the Black Stars forward know how many people in the country at the moment that will literally die to have three million dollars shared amongst a small group of their family members?

The players of the Ghana Black Stars have almost always made it clear that they have needs and, therefore, need to be paid for their work. Nobody disagrees with that.

But after taking those huge sums for your work, spare us the ‘dying for the nation’ talk. Because like every government worker in Ghana, all work for pay despite football’s payment being enormously huge.

And most of those government workers will testify not dying for the nation, except maybe the military.

Dying for the nation AGAIN after not being able to do an overpaid job for Ghana despite claiming your earnings? Please Asamoah Gyan, come again?