Former national team star Godwin Attram is still at the business of doing best what he knows, even if it is in faraway UAE. Attram scored 12 goals in the league and 19 in total for his club Al-Shab in the 2008/09 season but the 29 year old hitman says he still has a lot more goals to deliver. “I was born to score goals, I’ve always scored goals and I will continue to do so. I have scored a lot of goals for Ghana, I scored the last goal in the qualifiers to the 2006 World Cup. I didn’t start the match but I came in and I scored,” Attram said on the ‘Futbol n All’ TV programme.

Yes Godwin Attram did score the Black Stars’ last goal in the 4-0 rout of Cape Verde in Praia, the result that sealed qualification to Ghana’s first ever FIFA World Cup. An outstanding marksman in his teens, Attram wrote the headlines with his prolific goalscoring rate for Accra Great Olympics in the Ghanaian Premier League long before he celebrated his 17th birthday. The shining starlet even earned a call-up for one of Ghana’s key games at senior level at the time. He duly captained Ghana to the 1997 U-17 FIFA World Cup but that tournament will also mark the beginning of the woes of Godwin Attram.

Though he did earn a move out of Ghana for a professional stint abroad after the Egypt tournament where he led his team to 2nd place behind the Brazil of Ronaldinho, Attram will never again show the promise he showed as a teenager. From PSV Endhoven in Holland to many other clubs, Attram failed to cut it, apparently. But a move into the Arab world of football seems to have resuscitated the career of the striker. First in Saudi Arabia, and now in the United Arab Emirates, Godwin Attram rediscovered his striking touch and has consistently hit the target.

It was during Attram’s remarkable playing time in Saudi Arabia when he was first recalled into the senior team of his nation by Serbian tactician Ratomir Dujkovic. The striker took the opportunity by the scruff of the neck and was rightly hailed as one of Ghana’s heroes in the success of booking the first ever World Cup ticket. A place in the Black Stars squad to the African Cup of Nations of 2006 was thereby automatic but in a tournament where Ghana got knocked out in the first round, much of the blame was pushed unto the feet of the strikers. Attram was one of the casualties of many a player in Ghana’s 22-man squad to Egypt 2006, falling out of favour for the real deal in Germany.

The loss of his place in the national team is one that amazes Attram up till this day, but as the true professional, the former Great Olympics hitman remains unwavered. He has vowed to win back the belief of his countrymen because he knows there is one thing he does best that no one can take from him.

And that, he repeats, his unique goalscoring ability, the reason he believes he was called up by Black Stars coach Milovan Rajevac to join up with the national team squad as they prepared to face Sudan last time out in the SA 2010 qualifiers. That opportunity came because Prince Tagoe, reeling from his own legal and medical battles with German Bundesliga side Hoffeinheim, could not make the call-up.

Attram trained with the national team again for the first time in more than two years, and though he didn’t feature in the win against the Sudan, enjoyed the experience thoroughly. “Yes it was a very good reunion. I liked every moment of the time I was with them and will be glad to experience it again. But now I have the new league season in UAE to focus on, and the task is to score as many more goals as I can. And that’s just what I will do,” Attram affirmed in the ‘Futbol n All’ interview.