By Our Sports Editor
Super Eagles utility player and forward, Victor Osimhen has been crowned the 2023 African Footballer of the Year beating Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi and Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah.
The CAF event was held Monday night at Palais des Congrès in Marrakech, Morocco.
The Napoli striker is bringing the prestigious award to Nigeria twenty four years after Nwankwo Kanu’s reign.
The 24-year-old forward had a stellar 2022/23 season with Italian club, Napoli guiding the Partenopei to their first title in 33 years.
He contributed 26 goals in 32 league appearances last season and netted five goals in six appearances for the Naples club in the UEFA Champions League.
Though Nigeria agonizingly missed out on the 2022 World Cup, losing the ticket to perennial rivals Ghana, Osimhen’s contributions to the Super Eagles were staggering in the year under review.
He was the top scorer in the qualification race for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) with 10 goals.
Other Super Eagles players, Rashidi Yekini, Emmanuel Amuneke and Victor Ikpeba are the only other Nigerians who had won the prestigious award.
But Nwankwo is the most successful of them all as he remains the only Nigerian to have won the award twice in 1996 and 1999.
Only recently in Milan, the 24-year-old Osimhen was named the Italian Footballers’ Association (AIC) Player of the Year for the 2022/23 Serie A season.
He won the Golden Boot award at the 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup, which Nigeria won. He made his senior international debut in June 2017 and played at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations. He is currently the fourth all-time highest goal scorer of the Nigeria national team.
He was ranked number eighth in the 2023 Ballon d’Or award which was held in Paris, France and became the first Nigerian to make the top ten of the Ballon d’Or.
