Nigeria captain attacks BBC 'politics' over exclusion of Nigerian players in Africa awards list
23rd November 2018
Super Eagles stand-in captain, Ahmed Musa has registered his displeasure over the exclusion of Nigerian players in the 2018 BBC African Footballer of the Year list.
The Al-Nassr forward argued that he felt some of the nominees were not up to the standard in view of their World Cup performances.
He also accused the BBC of ‘politics’ in their selection process but encouraged the younger generation of Nigerian footballers to look ahead to the future with hope.
“I saw the list and I felt unhappy because when you see the players that are on the list, they are not even up to standard with what we did at the World Cup.
“So it’s the politics of the game, so we don’t have to think about that. Now we have a lot of young players doing well, so hopefully we will get our name there,” Musa said
This year’s nominees for the BBC African Footballer of the year Award are Medhi Benatia (Morocco), Kalidou Koulibaly (Senegal), Sadio Mane (Senegal), Thomas Partey (Ghana) and Mohamed Salah (Egypt).
Egypt Mohamed Salah won last year’s award and will be favourite to retain the title after an impressive season with Liverpool.