Starlets’ Eric Ayiah up for Caf award
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Black Starlets captain Eric Ayiah has been shortlisted for the 2017 Confederation of African Football (Caf) Awards scheduled to be held on January 4, 2018 in Accra.
The Charity Stars striker is in contention for the Youth Player of the Year Award. He faces contention from Mali’s Salam Giddou, Zambia’s Patson Daka, Senegal’s Krepin Diatta and South Africa’s Luther Singh. Ghana’s U-20 women’s side, the Black Princesses, who are on the verge of making a fourth successive appearance at the FIFA U-20 World Cup, have also been nominated for the Women’s National Team of the Year.
They face competition from their Nigeria counterparts as well as the senior sides of Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Atsu, Partey out
Ghana’s nominees for the flagship award of Caf Footballer of the Year, Christian Atsu and Thomas Partey, failed to make the 11-man shortlist released by the sport-governing body on the continent.
The shortlist was released after votes from members of the Caf Technical and Development Committee, Caf Media Experts and Independent Media and TV Consultants. Among the shortlisted players are Egypt’s Mohamed Salah, Senegal’s Sadio Mane, Guinea’s Naby Keita and Nigeria’s Victor Moses. The others are Burkina Faso’s Bertrand Traore, Gabon’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang Morocco’s Karim El Ahmadi and Algeria’s Yacine Brahimi. The rest are Cameroon’s Vincent Aboubakar and Uganda’s Denis Onyango, who is the only goalkeeper nominee and also the only one who plies his trade on the continent.
He has also been named in a 10-man shortlist for the same award for players based in Africa. In the list are Morocco’s Achraf Bencharki and Mohamed Ounnajem, both of Wydad Athletic Club, Egypt’s Ahmed Fathi (Al Ahly), Tunisia’s Ali Maaloul (Al Ahly) and Taha Khenissi (Esperance), Burkina Faso’s Aristide Bance (El Masri) and DR Congo’s Ben Malango (TP Mazembe). The rest are Nigeria’s Junior Ajayi (Al Ahly) and, surprisingly, New Zealand’s Jeremy Brockie (SuperSport).
By Emmanuel Kwame Amoh
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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