CAF stops recognition for home-based stars

 

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has removed the Africa-based Player of the Year category from its annual awards.

The African football governing body honours outstanding players at the end of every year in an awards ceremony, but CAF on Monday announced that the category meant for players who play on the continent had been removed from the 2017 edition.

The referee category was also cancelled out. These two categories were removed after a CAF emergency meeting decided to step them down.

CAF had in November reduced the initial number of 30 players in contention for the home-based player award to 10, from which the final shortlist of three was supposed to be named last Monday.

The list of ten included former Shooting Stars of Ibadan forward, Junior Ajayi, who currently plays for Al Ahly of Egypt. It also had Ugandan national team goalkeeper, Denis Onyango, who won the award last year.El Masry of Egypt and Burkina Faso’s Aristide Bance was also on the list.

One of the nominees, Jeremy Brockie, a New Zealand native and the first non-African to be shortlisted for the award expressed surprise at the cancellation of the category.

“I went online an hour or two so after the nominations had been announced [on Monday] and found there was no based in Africa anymore which was quite surprising,” Brockie, who plays for SuperSport United of South Africa told BBC Sport.

Winners of the now christened CAF AITEO awards for 2017 will be announced at a ceremony in Accra, Ghana, on January 4.