Following Victor Osimhen’s explosive exploit in Seria A which propelled his team Napoli to win their first Scudetto since 1990, Ghanaian legend Asamoha Gyan has said he deserves to win the 2023 African Footballer of the Year award.
At Udinese last season, Victor Osimhen’s second-half goal preserved a 1-1 draw which saw them win the league. Since Roma won the league in 2001, no club south of Italy’s traditional soccer cities of Milan and Turin has done so. Recall that the match was shown on large screens at Diego Armando Maradona Stadium in Naples, where more than 50,000 fans gathered.
To this end, Gyan believes that Osimhen deserved the honour because his club and individual accomplishments are greater than those of his rivals. “For me, he deserves it. As a striker and seeing what he is doing, for the first time in over 30 years, winning the league with Napoli. He deserves it,” he told Brilla FM, as quoted by Ghanaweb.
Since 1992, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has given the African Footballer of the Year award to the finest African player each year. Between 1970 and 1994, France Football magazine presented the Golden Ball Award for African Footballer of the Year.
Due to the modifications, Abedi Pele and George Weah received parallel Golden Ball honors from the magazine in 1993 and 1994, even though Rashidi Yekini and Emmanuel Amuneke won the CAF-sponsored awards for those years, respectively, while Abedi Pele received two trophies in 1992. After the European Ballon d’Or, which was also given out by the magazine, was opened up to all players in the European leagues, France Football stopped holding the election in 1995.
The Afrique Football magazine established an award in 1991. The program was ended in 2003 The most winners of the award are Samuel Eto’o and Yaya Touré (4 victories each). Didier Drogba, a two-time winner, is the player with the most runners-up finishes (four), third-place finishes (three), and top-three finishes. The only European-born players to get the award are Frédéric Kanouté, Riyad Mahrez, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Kanouté and Aubameyang both played for France’s U21 team before moving on to represent Mali and Gabon, respectively).
