A FIFA Grade A coach, Adegboye Onigbinde, says the only way to winning the most prestigious Confederation of African Football (CAF) Awards is having practicable football development programmes. Onigbinde made the assertion while speaking on Nigeria’s inability to be nominated for the yearly CAF awards in an interview on Wednesday in Lagos. He noted that in spite of the country hosting the award for three consecutive years, its players have not been able to win the African Footballer of the Year, the highest individual award. “My New Year’s resolution for the sports industry is that I will not want to speak much about country’s football. “It’s sickening to keep repeating the same thing over and over again without a sustainable development, we should forget all about the CAF awards.
“In fairness, I think the female team deserves it, but overall, we need to get it right administratively. “We keep doing the same thing and yet we expect different results, football is a developmental game; there are no shortcuts to it. “Hosting the CAF Awards is not enough, we should not be spectators,’’ Onigbinde said. NAN reports that so far, no Nigerian player made the final selection for this year’s Player of the Year award, leaving the competition to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon & Borrusia Dortmund). Others are Riyad Mahrez (Algeria & Leicester City), Sadio Mane (Senegal & Liverpool), Mohamed Salah (Egypt & Roma) and Islam Slimani (Algeria & Leicester City). The 2016 Glo-CAF Awards Gala, sponsored by telecommunication giants, Globacom, will be held on Jan. 5, 2017 in Abuja. Nwankwo Kanu is the last Nigerian to win the prestigious football award in 1996 and 1999 when he played for Arsenal FC of England.
NAN
