At 21, Asamoah Gyan burst on the 2006 World Cup scene and produced a star-performance in a Ghana squad filled with youth, experience and energy.
In 2010, he led from the front and came close to taking Ghana to the semi-finals in South Africa.
Now heading for his third-straight appearance in Brazil in June as Black Stars captain, Gyan, 28, looks a veteran already in a preliminary 26-man squad that has 18 players gunning for their World Cup debuts.
“I think the difference is that we’ve got a lot of young, good players on the team at the moment,” Gyan said.
“Before, we had a lot of experienced players who were also doing well in their own clubs and everything. I think the biggest difference we see today is that we have a lot of young chaps coming up. I think it’s a good thing.”
The Ghana striker has drawn encouragement from the emergence of a young generation of players now competing for places in the Black Stars side but says having the right balance is always key.
“Yea, it’s a good thing,” said Gyan, who scored on his international debut in 2003.
“Young players are more energetic players and our experiences combine together. Talking about experienced players, they can share that experience with the young players to combine everything – to deliver.
“So, I think experience also counts. Talking about young players, they’ve got more energy to do, maybe 200% of what experienced players can do. So the experienced players do well and they sit back and they control everything. With young players, there might be something that they might not know, so it’s like the experienced players show them the right path to do their job.”
Gyan believes the new band of young players should have the desire to go all the way at the World Cup.
“It’s very difficult to predict in tournaments like this, you know? It could be somebody’s breakthrough. I had my breakthrough in 2006 and even in 2010, so talking about tournaments, you might not know. There might be more expectation for a particular player and that player might end up disappointing. So, tournaments like that, we just have to go in as an all-around team and make sure we deliver for the nation. Definitely, there might be a revelation for the team, but I’m not God (laughs), so I don’t know at the moment. Let’s just go there and we’ll see what happens.”