When Ecuadorian children in Newark’s Ironbound district see Ransford Gyan, the best high school soccer player in America, receive the ball at Riverfront Park, a remediated brown field, they drop their scooters.
“Black Messi,” one whispers to the other.
Then, they stare, awaiting a singular burst or strike from the muscular midfielder who grew up playing barefoot on dirt streets in his remote Ghanaian village and now wears No. 10 for St. Benedict’s, the nation’s No. 1 team. His speed is a spectacle. He moves with gypsy grace.
At 17, Gyan, a lefty like Argentina’s Lionel Messi, is stateside on an I-20 student visa. He stands 5-foot-4, 140 pounds and powers St. Benedict’s 101-game unbeaten streak with back-heel touches, shoulder feints, uncommon balance and arcing blasts. During a recent workout, the GPS tracker he wears in a vest pocket on his back recorded a personal best – 24.18 mph – or 2.17 mph faster than Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill, the fastest man in the NFL, has run in a game this autumn.
Gyan’s resume includes two goals against world power Real Madrid’s U-14 team when he was 13, a month of training in Germany and multiple hat tricks prior to halftime against high schools. He keeps a 3.7 GPA, and his recruitment is down to Clemson, Duke and Rutgers. A decision is expected any day. Gill St. Bernard’s coach Tony Bednarsky, in his 33rd year, considers Gyan a top-five prep player in New Jersey history. Delbarton’s Dave Donovan marvels at his cunning and accuracy. Gyan routinely makes defenders fall or spin in circles.
“He’s incredibly difficult to find,” St. Benedict’s coach Jim Wandling says. “When he changes directions, you can’t keep up with a bigger body. When you go to block the ball, his legs are so short he gets everything off. Nobody has had an answer one on one.”
Now 15-0 and preparing for the prep state tournament final against Pennington, St. Benedict’s aims for a 15th national title, and Gyan is the cynosure. Opposing fans taunt him. “No. 10, I sure hope nothing happens to your kneecaps after the game!” one yelled in Delaware. Another demanded to see his birth certificate. Counterparts try to intimidate him. In the semifinal, a defender threw a ball at Gyan while he was on the turf. Gyan sprung up to confront him. Of late, he celebrates goals by immediately sitting down, closing his eyes and bringing together his thumbs and index fingers in the Gyan Mudra pose.
“I knew once I left Ghana I was going to do something great,” he says. “This is just the start. I’m aiming for something bigger.”
Fluent in English, Gyan, whose surname means “knowledge” in Sanskrit, speaks Twi, a dialect of Akan, on field when with fellow Ghanaians: Kwaku Agyabeng, also 17 and fresh off a professional trial in Belgium, and Felix Agyemang, a tri-captain who played for Ghana’s U-15 national team. Gyan and Agyabeng room together, the Ghanaian flag on their wall, in a dorm protected by electronic gates. They are fueled by fufu, a West African dish. At midfield, they trap opponents. When an opportunity appears, Gyan shouts as if in a bazaar.
“Easy money, Kwaku!” he says. “Easy money!”
Gyan’s value grows as he negotiates America’s fragmented high school soccer landscape. He aspires to play professionally in Europe and internationally for Ghana or the U.S., if he can gain citizenship before the World Cup returns to the Meadowlands in 2026. He holds the attention of evaluators who traffic in the murky multi-billion dollar market of loans, transfers and purchases. In Ghana, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, his father figure, Tomas Oduro, 43, says European scouts offered thousands of dollars for him as a pre-teen. In Newark, soccer touts inquired about “buying” him.
His worth is clear. When the pandemic started in 2020, 55 foreign students from St. Benedict’s were sent home before borders closed; Gyan — who dominated as an eighth-grader that fall — was one of seven students allowed to stay with house parents. In June, he became Gatorade’s national player of the year, the first Gray Bee to earn that title since Claudio Reyna, who did so in 1991 before playing in three World Cups.
Gyan headlines an independent program that challenges prep soccer’s form as officials weigh a return to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association 32 years after departing amid recruiting allegations. Since then, St. Benedict’s has prospected globally and navigated xenophobia while rocking a mini-bus back and forth and singing – “Vamos, Gray Bees!” – as they arrive at opponents’ fields.
This fall, the Gray Bees also have players from Senegal, Brazil, Peru, Guinea and Guyana. Their group chat is in WhatsApp. Above their field, 26 flags fly, one for each nation students hail from. They have outscored opponents, 87-2, but needed a golden goal to outlast St. Peter’s, 3-2, in double overtime. Gyan, who already had a goal on a breakaway, kickstarted the winning sequence; Agyemang finished.
“We’ve invaded,” Gyan says. “The Ghanaians have invaded!”
Minor movement
Gyan learned to be elusive on dirt streets in Nsawkaw, a village of 6,000 residents in Ghana’s Bono Region. At 5, he played barefoot, knocked over peddlers’ carts in pursuit of the ball and challenged men. When he returned home with scraped skin and bruises, he sobbed. His mother, Theresah Muah, a field worker, told him not to go back. Still, he returned.
“No more cry,” he said. “Big boy now.”
He ran through streets, on fields and up hills. When Gyan was 7, Kingsley Abeyje, a coach, and Oduro, a teacher, recruited him and opened AK Shion, an academy, in nearby Sunyani. Abeyje taught Gyan to read traps and ride defenders. Competitors went after his knees. Gamblers confronted players who disappointed. At Coronation Park, he watched Brong Ahafo United play Bofoakwa Tano on a field bordered by iron fences. “Losing fans pull at seats, throw stuff,” he says, smacking his hands together. “Madness! Crazy!” At home, he pounded yams into fufu with a thick stick. To watch Messi’s matches, he went to a wooden shipping container, where locals crowded around a TV.
“I wouldn’t miss a game,” he says, “not for anything.”
Word of a bone-thin boy mimicking Messi reached St. Benedict’s, which has connections in Ghana. Sylvers Owusu, 38, was born there and migrated to the Ivory Coast when he was 2. In 1997, his family won an immigration lottery to the U.S., and they settled in Newark. One day, while at a doctor’s office across from St. Benedict’s, Owusu saw the soccer field and told his mother he wanted to enroll. He did and eventually traveled with the team to play games in England and Bolivia. He matriculated to Saint Peter’s, played briefly in Portugal’s third division, became a U.S. citizen and returned to St. Benedict’s as an assistant coach and faculty member.
In 2014, he traveled to Ghana to prospect for players and met Anderson Asiedu, a 5-foot-6, raspy-voiced midfielder who lost his mother, Kumi Eva, in a car crash when he was 9 years old. Asiedu, whose father played professionally in Ghana, slept on floors, pieced together meals and spent time in an orphanage. At 15, he took note of Owusu watching as he worked out in threadbare cleats.
“Somebody told me there was this guy in town, he’s from here, hasn’t been back in a long time,” Asiedu says. “They didn’t say what he was looking for but they said, ‘If you’re playing, you never know what he sees.’”
Asiedu passed a test to see if he could handle the academics, flew to Newark, excelled, earned a scholarship to Monmouth and transferred to UCLA before making it in Major League Soccer. Two more Ghanaians followed his flight path, and one of them, Peter Yaro, recommended Gyan, who had moved in with Oduro, to St. Benedict’s. A reel of Gyan’s highlights darting through high grass to control the ball impressed Wandling, who was a captain on the 1991 national championship team.
FIFA rules restricted the movement of minors to foreign professional teams or their academies without the accompaniment of their parent or guardian, but schools were fair game. While the U.S. Soccer Federation had started steering American high school players to MLS academies in hopes of closing the gap with the world’s elites in 2012, St. Benedict’s doubled down on attracting international players. To supplement their school season, the Gray Bees shared their facilities with Cedar Stars, a club affiliate overseen by Capelli Sports, an apparel company with interests that span levels of the game in the U.S., Europe and Africa. To extend their field access, Capelli put in lights. It became a soccer Hogwarts drawing children as young as 6 years old.
In 2019, Sammy Akoto, a facilitator, relayed to Oduro, who teaches math and moral education, that Gyan, then 13, could get a scholarship to St. Benedict’s, the 150-year-old school that charges $15,000 in tuition and was transitioning from all-boys to co-ed. Oduro had never heard of the school, but when he saw online that they were national champions and produced three members of the U.S. men’s national team — Reyna, Tab Ramos and Gregg Berhalter — with a full academic experience, Gyan accepted.
Hurdles remained. When Oduro joined Gyan for his interview at the U.S. Embassy in Accra, the capital of Ghana, he was rejected. On a second visit, he was approved.
“The object is to play 2-3 hours per day,” Oduro told him. “What about the rest? Soccer will end. Education has no limits.”
Gyan arrived at JFK Airport on September 15, 2019. He wore a wristband to identify him as a minor traveling alone, pulled a roller suitcase and carried a brown folder. Owusu picked him up and drove him through Times Square to Newark, where he had his first American meal: fried chicken with yellow rice.
“Too sweet!” he says. “Whole new world.”
The next day, St. Benedict’s eighth-grade team had a game. Gyan suited up. The varsity practiced on the upper field. Gyan entered the game on the lower field that is surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire and measures 15 yards short of regulation width. He scored quickly. An assistant alerted Wandling. Gyan had four scores by halftime.
Gyan played in a freshman game that week and scored five goals. That autumn, he played with an all-star team at the International Champions Cup Futures tournament at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. Against Real Madrid’s U-14 team, Gyan stole the ball just outside the box and darted in for a goal. Then, he bent a set shot from 21 yards out for another score.
His rocket ride began. Soon after, Gyan went to Six Flags Great Adventure, where he rode Batman and Nitro roller coasters before begging off.
“He was so frightened,” says Wandling’s son, Baden, a junior. “Reaching top speed and dropping scared him to death.”
Class of one
Staying power at St. Benedict’s is personified in Rev. Edwin Leahy, a streetwise monk who came to the school as a student when it was all boys in 1959. He is in his 51st year as headmaster, having weathered the post-riot decades of Newark’s history and built the school into a soccer powerhouse. First, there was a pipeline to the Tahuichi Football Club in Bolivia’s hinterlands. Later, they hosted a tournament that attracted competition like Inter Milan, Liverpool and Queens Park Rangers. Brazilians paid full tuition for a chance at gaining entrance to American universities. On campus, foreign students stay in Leahy House, the dorm with a capacity of 62. They hold each other accountable. Near the computers, a paper alerts all to the golden rule:
DO NOT EAT OR
DRINK AT THE COMPUTERS!!
ANY VIOLATORS WILL BE
REMOVED PERMANENTLY!
Few remained longer than Gyan. In March 2020, the program sent 20 players home to Brazil. Gyan was the only eighth-grader to stay. While monks sheltered in place, Gyan and other students, including two other Ghanaians, unloaded delivery trucks and packed bags for the food pantry. The line, starting at a front door with no knob and a street sign that read “Make God Big Homie,” grew from 60 to 300 families amid the pandemic.
“Those days were tough,” Gyan says. “I’m not going to lie.”
In his room, he played FIFA as Real Madrid past 2 a.m. For release, they competed in soccer volleyball. One day, Gio Bonilla, a coach, lobbed ping pong balls and Gyan headed them. On the third toss, Gyan leaned in, only to find out it was an egg that cracked on his face. To call his mother, he walked to the Amazing Dollar Corner Store and bought calling cards. When house parents held commencement, Gyan wore the gray cap and gown, an eighth grade class of one.
Gyan was always going. When “Jerusalema,” a popular song by a South African DJ, came on, he broke into dance. At Branch Brook Park, he lapped Bonilla on the two-mile loop. To complete a rite of passage, Gyan carried a 30-pound backpack as he hiked 40 miles with classmates along the Appalachian Trail. At night, when others gathered around campfires, Gyan played knockabout with other soccer players.
The Gray Bees did not play a high school schedule his freshman season. But he excelled in mathematics and studied the game’s geometry, exhausting all angles to get shots off. Even on the run, he delivered goals with a pointillist’s precision. But around Thanksgiving, on a cold night, his momentum was halted when he tore the meniscus in his left knee during a club game. He was nervous about his future.
“You have 48 hours to feel bad for yourself,” Wandling said. “After that, focus on recovery.”
Gyan returned to post 18 goals and 14 assists as a sophomore. He drew defenders, flipped the ball over their heads, slipped through crevices and crafted spins that confounded goalies. When St. Benedict’s played against the United Soccer League team Queensborough’s U-20 squad, Gyan pulled his team even with a penalty kick and netted the winner. Pro scouts inquired about acquiring him.
“Well, you’re not getting him,” Wandling said. “I don’t know how you think this works.”
That summer, Gyan proceeded to Hamburger SV in Germany to train among professionals before continuing to Ghana, where he had not been since 2019. In Sunyani, Gyan gifted seven new balls and a St. Benedict’s jersey to Oduro, who re-iterated education’s importance; Gyan grew more curious about college; Wandling and assistant Kieran Patrick gauged his prospects as others schemed to slow him.
“They always have talent, but Gyan has something dangerous about him,” Penn Charter coach Bobby DiBenedetto says. “He cuts you with no wasted touches. My players watch his highlights all year and talk to me about plans to contain him, but if you lull or the wrong foot is forward, he attacks and is gone, the ball tied to his foot.”
Plaudits came. In 2022, he won the Golden Boot at the United States Youth Soccer Association’s U-18 National Championship, and Cedar Stars won the title. He received the ball with his feet, chest, thighs, head, face, back and rear end. During a game for St. Benedict’s last fall, he took a ball at the top of the 18-yard box, dribbled Zs and left four would-be tacklers splayed across 12 yards for a goal.
“I have good players, and he kind of makes them look silly,” says Walt Whitman High coach Dave Greene, who watched him net four goals and an assist during St. Benedict’s 5-0 win. “He is so creative on the run. Sometimes a player of that ability can’t fit in with teammates, but he makes it work in both directions. That’s special.”
Gyan has 26 scores and 12 assists this fall, but uncertainty propels him. A decade after coming to Newark, Asiedu has not returned to Ghana. In July, he received a green card through his USL team, the Birmingham Legion, and is back in Hoboken, training. One evening last month, Asiedu sat on grass behind the goal at Riverfront Park as Gyan strained to stay onside.
“I tell Ransford, ‘Stay focused. Without this, you can’t live here, you can’t assume you’re going to be working here,’” he says. “Still my driving factor.”
New Ghana
Cow’s feet, couscous and containers of Mama’s Choice Fufu Mix choke aisles inside Akwaaba, a store on Ghanaian Way in an industrial stretch of Newark. Gyan, Agyabeng and Agyemang — dressed in black school uniforms — walk in with Owusu. By the cash register, a sign advertises “AUTHORIZED AGENT: SEND YOUR MONEY TO GHANA.” Florence, the proprietor, greets them as they examine the menu.
“Before you got here, you should have made up your mind,” she says.
Food eases assimilation. Gyan orders tilapia with kenke, or ground corn. Agyabeng gets jollof rice; Agyemang relishes moutou soup; Owusu orders banku. There is a table in a cubicle, where Gyan washes his hands in the sink on the wall. When dishes come, they eat with their hands.
“Typical Ghanaian!” Gyan says. “This just like Ghana, bro.”
Agyabeng came from Kumasi a year, a month and a day after Gyan. He was 15 and initially stayed at an apartment in Edison. Freddie Etsiakoh, a 44-year-old, London-born coach who regularly visits Ghana, his parents’ homeland, arranged for Agyabeng’s path to St. Benedict’s. He shuttled him to and from school, but they were late each day early on, according to Agyabeng.
“I really wanted to go back,” he says, “but my dad told me I have to remember my three siblings and fight my way through it.”
Gyan, more proficient at English, proofread Agyabeng’s papers. On weekends, they watched European matches on laptops. It took Agyabeng, who reclassified as a freshman, a year to adjust, according to Etsiakoh, but he found his feet. In October, Agyabeng injured his right ankle and missed the next game. When Gyan scored, he sprinted to Agyabeng on the bench.
“Fast recovery,” Gyan said.
Agyemang arrived in Newark in January. In Kumasi, he has four siblings and left his home only for soccer. With the national team, he traveled to Morocco and Togo. He needed time to warm up after Etsiakoh picked him up from Newark Airport.
“I was feeling sick every two weeks,” he says.
Exchanges continue. Gyan sings Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”; Nigerian singer Burna Boy is on a team playlist. On occasions that require formal attire, Gyan favors a bow tie. When Agyabeng tells friends back home that they win, 11-0, Ghanaians express concern. “What is this competition?” one says. “Come home!”
Talk drifts to dreams. Gyan just returned from visiting Clemson, which has a Ghanaian goalie.
“They have their food spots?” Owusu says. “Did you ask?”
“No,” Gyan says.
“What’s the point of your visits if you don’t ask where you get your fufu?” Owusu says.
Getting nasty
The public address announcer at Abessinio Field in Wilmington, Delaware, welcomes 200 fans in attendance for a match between St. Benedict’s and Salesianum, an all-boys Catholic school that is ranked No. 6 in the country, with a prayer that calls for a “God of gentle strength” at 5:45 p.m. on October 7.
“Help all of us gathered here to be who we are and be that well,” he says.
In the visitors’ locker room, Gyan wraps white tape around his left wrist and writes “Believe” on it with black marker. When the game starts, calls for violence against Gyan emanate from the Sallies’ student section, which is populated with teenage boys with painted chests.
Punch him in the face!
Kick him in the balls!
When Gyan possesses the ball, they call him ugly, bark and liken him to a chihuahua.
I want to see a birth certificate!
The Gray Bees respond with clinical precision. First, Christian Oliveira, a forward from Union, lifts a pass to Amadou Hann, a 14-year-old striker from Senegal, for the game’s first goal. A few minutes later, Gyan dribbles on the right wing, stops, steps over, lifts the ball with his left foot and finds teammate Gianni Rosario’s forehead for a 2-0 lead.
No. 10, I sure hope nothing happens to your kneecaps after the game!
St. Benedict’s had been here before. A decade ago, during a game played against St. Benedict’s, Salesianum supporters held up a poster of President Barack Obama holding green cards. When St. Benedict’s foreigners possessed the ball, Sallies chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!” In 2013, Salesianum ended the Gray Bees’ 71-game winning streak. In the years since, the schools worked to bridge differences, but the night before the game, Wandling warned his players to expect hostility.
Salesianum boasts size, but the Gray Bees are relentless. When he turns the ball over, Gyan sprints 35 yards to get it back.
No. 10, who let you out of your car seat?
At halftime, Gyan, who averages around five miles per game, looks worn. His back tightens when running for long periods; trainers apply Tiger Balm for relief. Coaches jiggle his legs as he lays on his back.
Revived, he motors on. When surrounded by three defenders, he splits two, then gets tripped inside the box. He knocks in the penalty kick as the temperature drops to 58 degrees. His final effort comes when he finds an opening on the right wing. Two boys stop. “Hold on,” one says. “Messi! Messi!”
But he misses over the crossbar. When the final second ticks off, he shakes a counterpart’s hand and hurries to St. Benedict’s bench, where he puts on a jacket and continues across the running track alone, through a gate, down to the visitors’ locker room. He changes into a hoodie and pants.
“I couldn’t sleep yesterday,” he says. “I couldn’t breathe.”
He shakes his head when asked about the taunts.
“They were getting nasty,” he says, noting African crowds hardened him.
His throat is sore; his head hurts. He rejoins the team on field and picks up two water bottles left behind by others. They go back to the locker room, but Gyan keeps his hood over his head on the back bench. “Kwaku the Traveller” by Ghanaian rapper Black Sherif blares on a speaker; Agyabeng jumps on a bench. Hann follows. Gyan keeps his head down until the music stops. The Sallies’ parents host them with pasta and chicken. A mother asks Gyan if he is ill. He declines medicine.
“When did you start feeling this way?” Wandling says.
“Yesterday,” Gyan says.
“All right,” Wandling says. “I’m giving you a day off tomorrow.”
“We have practice tomorrow?” Gyan says.
“The team will,” Wandling says, “but I will give you the day off.”
The Gray Bees board their bus; taunts echo. When asked about the chants by NJ Advance Media, Salesianum athletic director Katie Godfrey says she was “disheartened and disappointed in our boys.”
“Our Student Council, who had already been discussing a visit to St. Benedict’s as their predecessors did the last two school years, now have a sense of urgency about the trip and intend to apologize in person to Ransford if granted the opportunity,” she says.
Man football
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Bonilla, now the junior varsity coach at St. Benedict’s, sits inside the abbott’s office and types a password into Peacock to access the Spanish broadcast for a friendly between the Ghanaian and American men’s national teams in Nashville. He wears a Team USA hoodie as he recalls trash talk with Gyan during lockdowns.
“I’ve been waiting for this game for three years,” Bonilla says. “It’s time.”
Gyan, Agyabeng and Agyemang enter. When Ghana’s 23-year-old Mohammad Kudus, a midfielder who recently signed a contract worth $46 million with West Ham in the Premier League, comes on screen, they shout, “Kudus!” As “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana” plays, Agyemang sings along. On the American sideline stands Berhalter, the St. Benedict’s alumnus and U.S. manager. In the stands is Asiedu.
In the match’s early minutes, Gyan relishes the physicality.
“Man football, baby!” he says.
They eat Brazilian burgers and drink Portuguese soda. Sirens wail outside, but quiet comes as the U.S. takes a 1-0 lead on a goal by Reyna’s son, Gio, who recently returned following a messy falling out with Berhalter.
“We done?” Bonilla says. “Can I go home?”
The Ghanaians had grown up in their country’s golden generation. Four months after Gyan was born, Ghana knocked the U.S. out of the 2006 World Cup in the Round of 16. The Black Stars eliminated the U.S. again in the 2010 World Cup, but the corruption and upheaval of a cash gifts scandal in recent years has taken a toll.
Ghana, No. 60 in the world, flails. The U.S., No. 14 in the world with six foreign-born players and three New Jersey natives on the roster, scores again. Gyan, who will turn 18 in February, grows defiant.
“We’re going to break them down,” he says. “We’re going to break them down.”
But Ghana never recovers. It becomes 3-0, then 4-0, before halftime.
“I gotta go, man,” says Gyan, eyeing his phone, which has an image of Messi holding high the World Cup trophy on its cover.
He wraps his burger, grabs a spray bottle and wipes the table before walking past a poster of Ramos in the hallway trophy case.
It is 9:30 p.m. Lights are mostly out inside Leahy House. Gyan has pre-calculus to finish.
“No regrets,” he says. “Only lessons.”
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