Meet the forgotten Premier League cult hero who was left with just £600: Star striker who once earned £227,000 a week was ordered to give his ex-wife two houses, two cars and a petrol station after DNA test proved he is the father of their three kids

Asamoah Gyan has worn a lot of hats – Ghana legend, Sunderland one-season wonder, boxing promoter, singer, Baby Jet airlines founder, tennis player, philanthropist, political activist, mineral water advocate, rice and noodles magnate, bus tycoon, petrol station entrepreneur, and author.

He has also needed lots of wallets – when he signed for Chinese side Shanghai SIPG in 2015 under Sven-Goran Eriksson, he was banking £227,000 per week, making him one of the world’s most handsomely remunerated ball-kickers. 

But in 2018 the river appeared to have run dry. Gone were the riches of China, the United Arab Emirates, and the Premier League, or so he claimed. Gyan, Ghana’s record goalscorer, confessed he had just £600 left in his piggy bank, though he was likely still wealthy in his portfolio of businesses and investments. 

To make matters worse, he became embroiled in a legal annulment saga with the last person he’d expect: his wife. There were accusations of infidelity, a DNA test, three kids caught up, a brother wading in. This is like an episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show which never made it to air. 

Years down the line, that case would not end well for Africa’s record World Cup goalscorer and would result in him handing over one of his prized possessions. You guessed it, a petrol station. And other stuff, too. 

Welcome to the madcap world of Asamoah Gyan. 

He will live long in the memory for Sunderland fans for his 2010-11 goalscoring campaign 

He was once on a contract worth £227,000 per week – but in 2018 claimed he was down to £600

For Sunderland fans of a certain vintage, this man is an icon. 

In the summer of 2010, the Black Cats forked out a record £12million to secure Gyan’s services from French side Rennes, sealing the deal 15 minutes before the deadline. 

He was coming hot off a summer in which he fired Ghana to the World Cup quarter-finals with three goals, though he missed a crucial final-minute penalty against Uruguay in their last eight exit. 

Gyan would turn out to be a revelation at the Stadium of Light, shouldering the goalscoring burden with Darren Bent and hitting 10 in the Premier League, a club-high that season. 

The 2010-11 season was one of their best in the Premier League as they surged to 10th under Steve Bruce, beating the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City on the way.

But the next summer, their newfound talisman was gone. United Arab Emirates side Al-Ain wanted him on loan, and so he went. And who could blame him? They were offering him a salary of £125,000 per week, around three times what he was pocketing in England. 

It was little surprise that he went on to make the move permanent the next summer. That salary eventually boomed to £160,000. Money talks with a persuasive tongue. 

We should be absolutely clear about one thing: Gyan wasn’t bunking off in the UAE. He bagged 128 goals in 123 games there, a phenomenal record that proved his commitment. Often bejewelled stars do not produce much fruit in these lesser heralded leagues. Gyan did. 

He is a hero in Ghana after firing them to the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals with three goals 

He earned around £160,000 per week in the UAE but was reprimanded for an ‘unethical’ mohawk

In 2015 he was welcomed with much acclaim to Chinese side Shanghai SIPG, where he was handed a contract of £227,000 per week

Gyan was able to live the high life and was a mostly popular figure wherever he played due to his goalscoring feats 

His affluence did not let him off the hook with the UAE’s coiffure standards, however. Due to having a mohawk, he was one of around 40 players warned for having ‘unethical’ hair.  

All his goalscoring caught the eyes of the executives at Shanghai SIPG. By 2015 the city’s population had swelled to a staggering 24.15 million – around three times that of London’s current size – and Gyan was about to become one of its VIPs. 

In 2015 Shanghai festooned Gyan with what was estimated to be the eighth-most lucrative salary in football at roughly £227,000 per week. 

On that sort of wonga, he was stashing away more money than some of the world’s leading strikers such as Sergio Aguero and Luis Suarez. 

He was greeted by hordes of well-wishers at the airport and gifted a bouquet as he strode through the terminal with an inscrutable expression behind his sunglasses.

‘I’m here to win,’ he declared at his unveiling.  

Except… it didn’t pay dividends. Well, it did for him. Not for Shanghai. 

Gyan scored a grand total of eight goals in 26 games over two seasons, working out at around £3m per strike. In another life, he would have been a fine negotiator. 

Things began to unravel with his wife Gifty when a DNA test was ordered to determine the biological father of their three kids 

Despite owning a gold Rolls Royce, a mansion, and multiple businesses, he claimed he did not have the money to fly out his three children for the DNA test

Gyan, who was apparently in love with socialite Nina Atalah, said he had not been paid for multiple months while playing for Kayserispor in Turkey 

At this point, it’d be easy to start losing track of your money. Gyan had been raking in exorbitant fees for half a decade. And that’s excluding the very tidy money he would have been on at Sunderland, Rennes, Udinese, and Modena before. 

At this juncture, between 2016 and 2018, it’s not entirely clear what went wrong financially for Gyan. But that empire of millions was reduced to smithereens one way or another, if his claim over having just £600 was to be believed.  

It all came to light in 2018 in a wrangle with his wife, Gifty. Gyan was refusing to talk to their three children until a DNA test, demanded by his brother Baffour, had proven they came from his own loins. He wanted a marriage annulment.

The sticking point? Gyan was unable to foot the bill for the business-class seats he had been ordered to pay for to whisk them from the UK to Ghana.

‘My front and back, up and down is that money (equivalent to £600) you see there,’ he said, via GhanaWeb.

The star even submitted bank statements from Turkey and alleged that his club at the time, Kayserispor, had not paid him for months.

That few months without pay, he felt, was the reason he had run out of money. The wallets once bulging with Chinese Yuan were almost empty.

Gyan and wife Gifty had met in 2002 and married in 2013 but GhanaWeb reported that he was smitten with socialite Nina Atalah. 

The striker has had his fingers in many pies, including being a mineral water advocate 

He has also run a rice and noodles business, a bus platoon, and a boxing promoting brand

To cut a long story short, while the marriage was annulled, the legal case did not go in Gyan’s favour. 

Last year a court ruled that he was the biological father of the three children and ordered him to pay extensive compensation to his wife and family. 

That compensation included a house in the UK, a four-bed home in Ghana’s capital city Accra, a BMW and an Infiniti car, and a petrol station. 

Not only that, but he was commanded to pay 25,000 Ghanaian cedis (£1,314) each month to support his children. 

It is not clear how much of his former wealth Gyan has recovered, though since 2020 he has been seen posing with his iconic gold Rolls-Royce and in his £2.4m mansion. However, he has been advised to leave that mansion – nicknamed La Basilica de Baby Jet – in Weija, Accra, over fears that it could collapse due to being built on top of a former quarry site and in an earthquake-prone area. 

Gyan also has an extensive portfolio of businesses and has found many ways to make money down the years. He used to be a singer under the stage name Baby Jet and recorded three albums with Castro, a hiplife artist. Gyan has also been a boxing promoter in Ghana through Baby Jet Promotions, owned Mama Vits Noodles and Rice, and been the proprietor of around 30 buses in the Accra region.

He also remains an influential figure in Ghana. The former Black Stars captain was part of the centre-right New Patriotic Party until September, when he announced that he was disaffiliating himself with party politics. 

Politics has caused disrespect to fall on Gyan’s name in the past. Sports journalist Patrick Osei Agyemang once astonishingly declared that Gyan missed his pivotal penalty against Uruguay in the World Cup just to deny the then-incumbent centre-left National Democratic Congress the pleasure of saying they had presided over the first African side to reach the semi-finals. 

Gyan was accused of deliberately missing his penalty against Uruguay to spite the centre-left government in Ghana in 2010 – something which has been refuted 

He found success at most clubs but only scored 8 goals for Shanghai, meaning each was worth almost £3m in salary

Moving forward he hopes to operate flights out of Kotoka International Airport, Accra

He remains an influential figure in Ghana as a philanthropist and as a political influencer

Needless to say, those accusations, a strong slight on a footballer’s honour, were refuted.

Stepping away from party politics this year, Gyan wrote: ‘I haven’t been fair to the youth and the people of Ghana. Henceforth I am not affiliated to any political party.

‘I will continue with my humanitarian work and help the youth of Ghana in my own small way. Nothing political. I wish all the political parties a peaceful election on the December 7 elections. God bless our homeland Ghana. Thank you.’

And so he continues his work with the Asamoah Gyan Foundation, which aims to enhance clean water access, education of girls, female work in agriculture, and sports development. 

Next year the charity will host the All Regional Games, a highly anticipated event which will seek to nurture and discover sporting talent from across Ghana’s 16 regions. 

Gyan has also promised that he will start operations ‘very soon’ with his company Baby Jet Airlines. It was founded in 2017 but is yet to see a flight take off, with Covid-19’s interference supposedly being a big factor in the delay. 

Whatever happens next, one thing is for sure: Gyan’s legacy is already secure. The joy he brought to Ghana in 2010 was without parallel. Even in Manchester City’s recent 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest, Jeremy Doku was mimicking his dance celebration. 

Not that forgotten, then.