Michael Essien, as anyone here will tell you, is Ghana’s biggest player. Not the best player — that title is reserved for injured midfield talisman Stephen Appiah — but the most luminescent of all the Black Stars of Ghana. The Man. If any visitor here can’t figure that out on his own, he’s been drinking too much apeteshie, the local firewater. Essien’s smiling visage, with those game-ready eyes and spiky Tracy Chapman mini-dreads, is plastered on billboards and posters all over town. The 25-year-old Chelsea midfielder is shilling for everything from MTN, the South African mobile phone company and main sponsor of the African Cup of Nations, to Guinness to a local yogurt drink called FanYogo (tagline: “My Secret”). “Michael is a world brand now, like Beckham,” former Ghana captain Tony Baffoe told me when I ran into him at the Golden Tulip Hotel. “It’s good. It’s good to have a black hero, good for our nation, good for Africa, and good for the kids.” Essien is plastered on billboards and posters throughout Accra. (Greg Lalas) Many Ghanaian boys dream of becoming the next Essien and scoring a massive contract in Europe. (Essien’s roughly $43 million transfer fee from Lyon to Chelsea in 2005 is still a record for an African player.) To make this dream come true, the “colts,” as teenage players are known in Ghana, play for local youth clubs like Iron Breakers or join the academy of a professional club like Accra Hearts of Oak or Kumasi Asante Kotoko. (Unfortunately, there are also many documented cases of shady agents taking advantage of naive poor families, promising football riches in Europe that too often result in nothing.) This being a soccer tournament, of course, the best way to measure a player’s popularity is to tally the number of replica jerseys sported by the fans. At Ghana’s games in Ohene Djan Stadium, I see about two Essien jerseys for every Appiah shirt. At the recently opened Puma store in the Accra Mall, Essien’s No. 8 Ghana jersey goes for about $100 a pop. But you can get a cheaper version from a roadside vendor like Jean, whose stand on the busy Osu Oxford Street is a commercial shrine to the Black Stars. “Essiens are moving,” he said. Jean asks for $15 for a Ghana jersey and around $8 for a No. 5 Chelsea shirt. Those prices, Jean assured me, are “just a start.” If a fan can’t get his hands on an Essien jersey, any Chelsea one will do — Didier Drogba, Jon Obi Mikel, Andriy Shevchenko. I asked a young man wearing a Michael Ballack jersey if he was a fan of the German midfielder. “Yeah,” he replied. “Because Chelsea is very good and Michael Essien play for Chelsea.” It is Essien-ism by association. The Michaelmania is great fodder for Essien’s Ghana teammates. “Out here, Mike is very humble and likes being part of the team,” striker Junior Agogo, who also plays in England, told me the other day after practice at Elwak Stadium. Then he smirked. “But, yeah, there’s a bit of banter with the boys about all of it.” The Black Stars sit atop Group A right now, so they can afford to joke around. The only criticism thrown their way has landed sharply on the neck of off-target striker Asamoah Gyan, the very mention of whose name elicits a wrenching cry of dismay from Ghanaian fans. “Oooooh, Asamoah Gyan!” But Gyan is not the face of the Black Stars. If Ghana stumbles Monday night, when the side must get a result against Morocco, it will be the Essien brand that takes the hit. Essien had an unimpressive outing in Ghana’s opener before turning in a man-of-the-match performance in the Black Stars’ 1-0 win over Namibia on Thursday night. It’s this inconsistency that irks some Ghanaian fans, particularly, it seems, my cab drivers. “Essien in Britain, he perform better,” my cabbie told me last night, reiterating the complaints of several other drivers I’ve encountered. “He is at 70 percent in Britain, 30 percent in Ghana. Appiah is 50-50. So I prefer Appiah.” Source: nytimes