Former Super Eagles captain, Mikel John Obi, has asserted that he was unfairly denied the prestigious CAF African Player of the Year Award in 2013, making this revelation on his podcast, Obi One.<\/p>\n
In the podcast, Mikel expressed his belief that his remarkable achievements that year, including crucial roles in Chelsea\u2019s UEFA Europa League triumph and Nigeria\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) victory, were overshadowed in favor of Ivorian midfielder Yaya Toure, who, according to Mikel, had no silverware during that period.<\/p>\n
Despite Mikel’s outstanding performances, which also included a UEFA Champions League title in 2012, he found himself placed second in the CAF Player of the Year voting, with the award going to Yaya Toure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2013, it was my trophy (CAF Award) to be won. I thought I was winning it because I had an amazing year,\u201d Mikel asserted, revealing that he was informed by CAF that he was going to win.<\/p>\n
Mikel’s claim raises questions about the transparency of the CAF Player of the Year selection process. He expressed a sense of being robbed and questioned the fairness of the decision, especially considering his significant contributions to both club and country.<\/p>\n
The revelation comes ten years after the incident, indicating that Mikel still harbors feelings of injustice over the perceived snub. The timing of Yaya Toure\u2019s three consecutive wins aligns with the CAF presidency of Issa Hayatou, a Cameroonian, leading Mikel to assume that he was Ivorian like the former Bar\u00e7a and Man City star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Super Eagles captain, Mikel John Obi, has asserted that he was unfairly denied the prestigious CAF African Player of the Year Award in 2013, making this revelation on his podcast, Obi One. In the podcast, Mikel expressed his belief that his remarkable achievements that year, including crucial roles in Chelsea\u2019s UEFA Europa League triumph […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[352],"class_list":["post-6118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-mikel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6153,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions\/6153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}