For Asamoah Gyan last week should have been about his move to join the Chinese Super League side Shanghai SIPG on a reported £227,000 a week. It should have been about whether he is really making the best use of his talents or whether, at 29, he would be better off in Europe chasing medals rather than cash. As it turned out, last week was about another scandal. Gyan is a man, it seems, perpetually wedded to controversy.

The latest furore erupted after a 22-year-old student revealed she had had an affair with Gyan. He does not deny it but what he does deny is her claim that she is pregnant with his child and that he “forcibly sodomised” her in her bathroom, something she claims to have on video, although she has said now is not the right time to release the tape.

There have been suggestions police tried unsuccessfully to confiscate the student’s phone to see if the video is there. According to reports, she first attracted Gyan’s attention by sending him a suggestive video of herself.

This latest controversy came a year to the week after the disappearance of Gyan’s friend, the rapper Castro (real name, Theophilus Tagoe) and their mutual friend Janet Bandu. They were last seen riding jet-skis in the Atlantic in the coastal resort of Ada. No bodies have been recovered and both families have insisted they believe the pair to be alive. Police have said they have expanded their search for them to other West African countries, the implication being that, for reasons that remain opaque, they are in hiding.

By September the innuendo linking Gyan to the disappearance had become so strong that he felt compelled to release a statement denying it (which, unfortunately, only served to alert the world’s media to the story allowing it happily to report the lurid allegations Gyan was repudiating).

“What sells in the media,” Gyan’s statement read, “and what indeed is sold and is still selling in the media in Ghana are wild allegations and rumours directed especially at Asamoah Gyan, ranging from the absurd – of the imputation of criminality to him in the sense that he either murdered Castro or had him kidnapped – and ending with the ludicrous – that he sacrificed him spiritually to enhance his career.”

Maybe it is no more complicated than that: that Gyan is a star suffering the worst attentions of a certain section of the Ghanaian media. His relationship with certain journalists has always been uneasy. During the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations, which Ghana hosted, for instance, he was criticised so severely after missing a couple of easy chances that he tried to walk out on the squad, only to be persuaded to stay by his brother, Baffour, and Michael Essien. Last year there were allegations that Baffour had beaten up a hostile journalist, although after an arrest charges were subsequently dropped.

Whatever the reason for the constant background of scandals, they tend to occlude the most interesting aspect of Gyan’s career, which is that, for all his talent, he has chosen to play in Abu Dhabi and China. He was 25, had helped Ghana to a World Cup quarter-final and was, in patches – the 3-0 win at Chelsea perhaps most notably – looking as though he might develop into a genuine star at Sunderland when, in 2011, he abruptly departed for Al Ain.

He quadrupled his salary and Sunderland just about got their money back (although given they’d just sold Darren Bent, the timing couldn’t have been worse and precipitated the New Year collapse of 2010-11), but it was hard not to wonder then whether, in the long run, he might not have been better staying in Europe, developing further as a player and increasing his pay that way. Then again, given the cultural pressure to provide for an extended family, maybe it was only natural to take the money when it was offered.

As it was, Gyan scored 73 goals in 63 games for Al Ain and his value remained high. Financially, it’s hard to believe he could have done any better elsewhere. Nor has there been any obvious downturn in his form for the national side. But still, it is difficult not to wonder just how good he might have been had he pushed on at a higher level, and whether his legacy might not have been key goals in the Champions League rather than a slew of sordid gossip.