Asamoah Gyan might not have featured in the Ballon d'Or 2013 honours but the Ghana captain is rated highly amongst the World's best strikers.

Ghana coach, Kwesi Appiah reckons that the Al-Ain player is up there with the best after he netted 40 times for both Club and Country to become the sixth highest top-scorer in the year 2013.

Such prowess in front of goal ranks Gyan among the world’s best finishers.

“I know Gyan is not playing in what would say the top leagues, but where he’s playing he’s doing so well, he’s scoring a lot of goals,” Kwesi Appiah said about his captain.

“For me he’s improved a lot. His confidence levels have risen so high and when he has the opportunity, there’s no way he will not put it in. For me he’s one of the best strikers in the world.”

In the last quarter of 2012, Appiah handed Gyan the Ghana captaincy ahead of other key members of the team like Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari and John Paintsil.

And it's a decision the Black Stars coach is happy to have made.

“By the time I made the decision of who to be the captain, I had been with the team for about three years, so I knew what each and every player had. I got to realise that Gyan is a player who all the players love too much. They listen to him. When the team is down, he encourages them, he brings their spirits up. So I said to myself, ‘Why not give him a try? In the first place, I need him to work [harder], so let me give him the captaincy and trust him with the responsibilities’. For me he’s done so, so well.”

Gyan has qualified Ghana to a third-consecutive World Cup finals in Brazil as he's on the verge of participating in his third-straight finals after his debut in 2006 in Germany.

He finished the 2014 qualifiers as one of the three top-scorers in Africa, scoring 6 goals in six matches for Ghana.