Ex-Ghana striker Asamoah Gyan has said “juju” exits in football, although many players are reluctant to speak about it.
The 37-year-old said he first witnessed such practices while playing colts football for Cedar in Ghana’s capital.
“Anything that has a name it exists. We all, like in colts, we all go together and they tell us ‘get this and bath with it, do this and that’,” Gyan told Dan Kwaku Yeboah in a YouTube interview.
“And if you don’t do it and the team loses, they’ll say you caused the defeat. With Cedar, we did it once or twice. We played Liberty we were beaten 4-0, but juju is in football.”
“I remember another colts game, a man told us to do something for two goals. Sometimes with a padlock they will tell you if you score one that is it.”
He added: “You can get an empty net and shoot wide when the one goal enters that is it so it (juju) is there. When someone scores a goal people usually say this is a mallam goal they know it (juju) is there.”
“We all have what we believe. Someone will close from church and pass by a mallam. There are a lot of players if they will tell the truth they do those things.”
“Someone will not tell you their secret but if you are very observant you will see that something is going on. That person will not tell you there is something going on but if you are observant there are certain things you will see.”
Meanwhile, Gyan also revealed that coach Kwasi Appiah apologised after stripping him of the Black Stars captaincy.
Gyan served as Ghana’s captain for nearly five years but saw the armband taken away from him just weeks before the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).
Appiah, who was the national team coach at the time, made the veteran striker the general captain while picking Andre Ayew as his new skipper.
The decision did not enthuse Gyan, who announced his retirement from the national team, but made a U-turn following President Akufo-Addo’s intervention.
Pulse
