Nominees for BBC 2018 African Footballer of the Year released

The BBC has announced the nominated players for the BBC 2018 African Footballer of the Year Award.

The list compiled by a panel of African footballers, the shortlist includes: Medhi Benatia (Morocco), Kalidou Koulibaly (Senegal), Sadio Mane (Senegal), Thomas Partey (Ghana) and Mohamed Salah (Egypt).

Egypt’s Mohamed Salah was last year’s winner. Voting for this year’s award opened at 7pm on Saturday 17 November and will close on Sunday 2 December.

Previous winners of the award have included Nigeria’s Jay-Jay Okocha, Ghana’s Michael Essien, the Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba and Yaya Toure, and Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez.

This year’s nomination however did not see any Nigerian footballer featured on the list. According to a random poll on Twitter, Nigerian footballers have not really performed excellently at their various leagues across the world in the year 2018.