It has emerged that President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kwesi Nyantakyi and the head of the GFA’s Technical Directorate, Francis Oti Akenteng, did not choose Black Stars forward Andre Ayew as part of their top picks for the Glo CAF Player of the Year.
Ayew was part of the initial 30-man shortlist for the award which also had the likes of Sadio Mane, Ahmed Musa, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Riyad Mahrez, Dennis Onyango among others.
However, the player did not make the final 3-man shortlist for the award.
The voting decisions taken by Kwesi Nyantakyi, who is part of CAF’s Media Committee and Oti Akenteng, a menber of CAF’s Technical Committee, came to light when the Confederation of African Football released the voting patterns for the 2016 Glo CAF Player of the Year awards.
In the document, Kwesi Nyantakyi’s top picks were in the following order: Riyad Mahrez in first place, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in second place and Mohammed Salah in third place.
Nyantakyi voted for Ayew in fourth place while Nigerian young forward Kelechi Iheanacho was his fifth choice.
For Oti Akenteng, he chose Mahrez, Dennis Onyango, Andre Ayew, Islam Slimani and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in that order.
In the voting process for the CAF Player of the Year awards, players get more points for being picked higher in the order.
Thus, Nyantakyi’s choices gave Mahrez 5 points while Ayew got 2 points for being picked in fourth place.
Akenteng’s decision to pick Ayew as his third gave the West Ham man 3 points in the voting process.
Andre Ayew had a brilliant 2015/2016 season with Swansea scoring twelve times and providing two assists to help rescue the Swans from relegation. His brilliant form helped him secure a club record transfer to West Ham in August 2016.
But it seems Mahrez’s great showing for Leicester City that saw him score 17 times and create 11 goals got him a lot of admirers including the GFA boss and the head of GFA’s Technical Directorate.
Riyad Mahrez, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sadio Mane were the eventual finalists with the Algerian coming out on top.
The document released by CAF can be found here.
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