Crazy Dads' Dance - How Asamoah Gyan's Dancing Steps Created A Buzz

Ghana’s football legend who rose to dizzying heights and glaring fame during the June 2010 World Cup, emerged as Africa’s top goal scorer has created a new buzz in English football.

Two Saturdays ago, our “love me, hate me” Baby Jet Asamoah Gyan gave Britain’s sports journalists and football fans something to talk and laugh about.

While the Sunderland Football Club for which Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan currently plays the forward striker position jubiliated over its 3-0 victory over Chelsea, perhaps its greatest day in the Club’s recent history, British football fans were thrown into a frenzy mood.

Why?

Sunderland’s match that Saturday against the British premier league leaders may have, for one reason, attracted the likes of me who under normal circumstances would not care much for a football game.

I was eager to see how two of my country men, playing on the opposite side of each other, were going to do it in a competitive football game watched by millions.

I was even keener to see how the Blues, Michael Essien’s Chelsea Club, was going to dish it out to Asamoah Gyan’s Black Cats, the Sunderland.

What piqued my curiosity most was how the body language of the two kinsmen playing such a crucial game for their teams was going to be like as the game got heightened .

Unfortunately for me I did not get to see what I wanted. Michael Essien did not play that day because he was on suspension.

Nonetheless, I still was keen to watch the game. Three of Sunderland’s players, two of whom happened to be of Ghanaian origin, gave the Club a sweet victory over the premier league favourites.

The Sunderland goal scorers for that Saturday were Nedum Onuoha, Asamoah Gyan and Danny Welbeck.

Asamoah Gyan’s goal was the second for the team, following that of Onuoha. The third goal was scored by Welbeck whose parents are Ghanaians.

As expected, soon after his beautiful goal, Ghana’s Baby Jet made a quick dash to a corner of the pitch to wiggle his waist and do his famous crazy dance.

From nowhere, Sunderland’s Dutch midfielder, Boudewjn Zenden jumped in with Asamoah Gyan to do the rhythmical dance that has earned the name Dads’ dance.

Boy. Watching Zenden dancing with Baby Jet was such a great entertainment. As if he was being tickled, he twisted his waist and threw up his hands in the air just like an old grand dad doing his own thing at a children’s birthday party. He was very much out of sync.

That is where the name Dads’ dance is coming from. Zenden succeeded in throwing thousands of football enthusiasts into bouts of laughter with his gawky out of tune steps.

He gave the UK media a whole week’s menu to feed on. The sports media has not stopped poking fun at Zenden and his new found dance steps. They have succeeded in exciting everyone too, watching the repeat game and of course the famous dance.

Later on that Saturday night on BBC’s Match of the Day programme, the host and his guests took the baton and run with it as well. Even the non-football enthusiasts like me were hypnotised into the jollity.

Honestly speaking, the media all over are of the same species, aren’t they? I find no real difference between the media of the West compared to my friends at home.

They will pick one little solecism from one small corner, spice it up and make a plate full of juicy picks for the society to chew on.

But for them, a lot of the gaffes made by political figures and other celebrities would go unnoticed. Corruption, crime and all those ills out there would have swallowed our societies up for the worse.

In some ways, they are a good development for our world today. As people take interest in the happenings around them and citizen journalism continues to blossom all over the place, societies get enlightened and the world keeps getting smaller.

The citizenry is getting the opportunity to actively participate in reporting on issues happening in every corner of the world, sharing and commenting on matters as they unfold and bringing the feelings and thoughts of the people to the fore.

It is perhaps one of the best developments in modern democracy. I did watch Ghana’s quarter finals game with Uruguay at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

I felt cheated for my country when we missed the huge opportunity to go to the semi-finals as our Baby Jet, Asamoah Gyan missed that penalty strike.

I am one of the perhaps not too many Ghanaians who were on the side of our striker at the time. I did not see why people were displeased with Asamoah.

He was one of the key players in Ghana’s squad who got us to where we were at that point in the World Cup quarter finals. I thought the least we could do was not to castigate him for that mistake in his anxiety to get us there.

Today, my toast in football, the 26 year old Asamoah Gyan, is making ripples again in the world of football with his continued goal scoring record and the famous dancing steps.

As I continue to develop pride in him for what he loves doing best – scoring goals – and watching him play the other Saturday against the Chelsea football Club at the Stamford Bridge in London, I decided to go on the internet to learn more about his skills.

Wow An impressive record, I thought. Since he started to play for Ghana, he has played a total of 45 games and scored 22 goals.

Now with England’s Sunderland on a 4-year deal from the French team, Rennes, he has already played 10 games for Sunderland’s Black Cats and has scored six goals.

He definitely is working for his current fee of thirteen million pounds, thought to be the highest apparently paid by the Club for transfer fees.

This even beats the record transfer fee paid by the Club to Tottenham Hot Spurs for striker Darren Bent. Indeed, football is about goal scoring, Asamoah seems to have it.

However, I have not only come to develop a new liking for Asamoah Gyan’s goal- getting talents, I also love his hidden talents in music.

I have in the past week, listened over and over again and watched the video of his recorded hip life song with Castro the Destroyer entitled, “African Girls”.

He is multi-skilled. Perhaps that is why the crazy dance comes so naturally too when he is in the celebration mood.

The Baby Jet has left British football fans and perhaps the world too, something to giggle about henceforth.

As he and Zenden, his teammate at Sunderland, continue to star in Dads’ dance, one can only wish him more goals and more dancing steps.

For now, they have reminded us of some of the best, worst and most iconic goal celebrations ever seen. We remember, with nostalgia, the dance steps of Roger Milla at the 1990 world Cup and the robot dance of England’s Peter Crouch.

The Dads’ dance is for now the new dance in vogue on the football pitch, inspired by our own Baby Jet; nominated alongside four others to receive the BBC African Footballer of the Year.

Can anyone imagine the new cool dance of the Year to be unveiled should Baby Jet get the nod for this award? We wait to see.