2019 CAF Awards: Oshoala, Mane Are Africa Best

By Akinwale Kasali

Super Falcons Captain and Barcelona Football Club of Spain striker, Asisat Oshoala, has been announced as  Africa’s Best Female Footballer for 2019.

At the Confederation of African Football awards ceremony held in Egypt, Oshoala was voted the best female player for the third time, ahead of Bayana Bayana of South Africa forward, Thembi Kgatlana, and Indomitable Lioness of Cameroon forward, Nchout.

The Barcelona forward scored a brace over the weekend for the Catalan Club Side, to extend her dominance among other African players in Europe.

In the Male category, Senegalese Captain and Liverpool Football Club of England mercurial forward, Sadio Mane, was crowned the best Footballer in Africa, displacing fellow Club side player, Mohammed Salah, who holds the award.

Mane became the final awardee for the decade 2010 – 2019 in the Egyptian city of Hurghada.

He succeeds Salah who was also shortlisted along with Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez who led Algeria to AFCON glory in 2019. Both contenders were absent at the event.

The consistent Liverpool player, this season, received his award from CAF President, Ahmad Ahmad, alongside the first award winner for the decade, African legend, Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, who won his fourth award in 2010 when he was with Italian side Inter Milan.

Mane was instrumental to his club side’s winning of the UEFA Champions League in the 2018/2019 season, the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA World Club Championship in Qatar, and was captain of the Senegal side that lost the 2019 AFCON to Algeria in Egypt.

This was the fourth straight time that he had been shortlisted for the award. He lost in 2016 to Gabons Aubameyang (at the time with Borussia Dortmund). Then missed out to Salah twice in 2017 and 2018. Many analysts projected, after  AFCON, that this was his year despite the final loss.

The hope of Victor Osimhen winning the Youth African Footballer of the Year award was dashed, as Morocco and Borussia Dortmund’s defender, Achraf Hakimi, won the award, to the disappointment of Osimhen’s teeming fans.