Nigeria continues to show that it is indeed the African giant. With Ademola Lookman winning the 2024 CAF Best Men’s Player of the Year Award, Nigeria bagged the continent’s biggest football award for the second year in a row after Lookman’s international teammate Victor Osimhen won the award last year with little fuss.
Nigeria has won the award a grand seven times through the likes of Rashidi Yekini, Nwankwo Kanu, Victor Ikpeba and Emmanuel Amuneke.
However, the 2024 nominees list for the top award, it must be said, left much to be desired particularly when compared to nominees list in previous years.
Whereas prime years of Michael Essien, Stephen Appiah, Samuel Osei Kuffour didn’t yield such top recognition due to them running into some of the best years of El-Hadji Diouf, Yaya Toure, Emmanuel Adebayor and Frederick Kanoute, Lookman award winning year didn’t run into such world class obstacles and that’s how football goes.
Some of Lookman’s best work in the 2023-2024 season came up tops over production from Achraf Hakimi, Simon Adingra, Serhou Guirassy and Ronwen Williams. Not to take anything away from the nominees but aside excelling in Cote D’Ivoire’s 2024 AFCON winning campaign, Adingra didn’t impress as a world beater at Brighton and Hove Albion.
Hakimi played better in the 2022-2023 campaign than he did in the season under review while Williams’ “continental run” was bound to count against him in votes. Considering that even the great Mohammed Aboutrika missed out winning the CAF Player of the Year Award to Adebayor, Williams miss wasn’t surprising at all.
Guirassy is a late bloomer whose best campaign to date got Stuttgart into the UEFA Champions League but a tame AFCON campaign with Guinea with no titles like Lookman, who bagged the Europa League title with Atalanta, put him on the back burner.
Lookman also helped his CAF Award winning case by starring in the big moments including scoring a hat-trick in the Europa League final and scoring three times in Nigeria’s run to the 2024 AFCON final.
While there was no controversy about Lookman’s win, there was more than enough controversy over the selections to the CAF Men’s Best XI.
Ghana’s Mohammed Kudus making the list was the right call since the former Ajax Amsterdam man impressed in his debut season with West Ham United. Getting 18 goals and seven assists in 48 games in all competitions makes him a worthy member of the team.
However, it is dead wrong to suggest that Kudus should have made it to the final list of nominees for the CAF Best Player Award.
For starters, Kudus’ West Ham failed to make it even to the Europa Conference League and Kudus wasn’t even named as the best player at his club after Jarrod Bowen won the award with Kudus coming in second place.
In an AFCON year, the continental showpiece carries a ton of weight in the voting process and Ghana’s abysmal performance in Cote D’Ivoire that ended in another group stage exit, hurt Kudus despite the midfielder scoring two goals in two games and winning Man of the Match Awards in both games he played at this year’s AFCON.
Though many of the CAF Best XI picks were the right ones like Yves Bissouma and Hakimi, a handful of the other team members were flat out wrong choices. Andre Onana, Kalidou Koulibaly and Sofyan Amrabat should not have made it to the team ahead of Ronwen Williams, Edmund Tapsoba and Lamine Camara.
Onana is having a fantastic season but his run last season was anything but fantastic as the Cameroonian’s time at Man United was riddled with mistakes that led to goals conceded and low lights. Onana’s Cameroon also crashed out of the AFCON at the Round of 16 stage with Onana missing the opener against Guinea in controversial circumstances.
On the other hand, Ronwen Williams starred at the AFCON by making four penalty saves in a quarterfinal clash to help South Africa reach the semifinals on the back of winning the South African league title; the South African league is the best league in Africa by the way.
Night to remember for Ronwen Williams. 🤴🇿🇦 #CAFAwards2024 pic.twitter.com/WmYd9WHFKh
— CAF_Online (@CAF_Online) December 16, 2024
On both counts, Ronwen Williams beat Onana and deserved to make Africa’s best XI especially as the man who won the Best Goalkeeper Award and the Interclub Player of the Year Award; he was the only player who won two awards on the night.
After playing a pivotal role in Bayer Leverkusen’s near perfect treble winning season, Burkina Faso’s Edmund Tapsoba deserved to be in this team ahead of Kalidou Koulibaly. Through Xabi Alonso, Tapsoba won Bayer Leverkusen’s first ever league title plus the German Cup and was a win away from winning the Europa League only to lose to Lookman’s Atalanta in the final.
While Koulibaly won the Saudi Pro League and King Cup with Al-Hilal, Tapsoba’s starring role in Leverkusen upstaging Bayern Munich in a way better league than the Saudi league deserved a place among Africa’s Best XI.
Just like Andre Onana, Sofyan Amrabat had a horror 2023-2024 season at Man United and was universally voted as one of the biggest transfer flops last season. Coming off a stellar performance at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Amrabat was supposed to elevate Erik Ten Hag’s team but was bad at it and eventually, these sort of bad returns on transfers culminated in Ten Hag’s sacking.
The Moroccan has established himself at Fenerbache this season but per the season under review, Amrabat disappointed and didn’t deserve to make the CAF Best XI. Senegal and AS Monaco prodigy Lamine Camara won the CAF Young Player Award for the second season in a row and deserved a place in the team ahead of Amrabat.
Prior to an upsurge in production this season, Liverpool’s top hierarchy must have feared regression in Mohammed Salah’s play and his likely played a role in their decision to not extend the Egyptian star’s contract heading into the final year of his deal.
Producing 25 goals and 14 assists in 44 games is a brilliant return rate but even Liverpool fans noted that Salah’s 2023-2024 campaign was far from his best and a hamstring injury hampered his AFCON run.
On the other hand, Serhou Guirassy’s campaign last season was utterly brilliant as he scored 30 goals in 30 games and added three assists for Stuttgart before moving to Borussia Dortmund. As such, the Guinea international deserved a spot alongside Lookman and Osimhen in the frontline of CAF’s Best XI.
