The stage will be set on Thursday at the International Conference Centre in Abuja. The lights will be thrown on targets with cameras focused on the stars of African football.
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Why Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang should be 2015 CAF Player of the Year
The statistics speak for themselves. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang should be crowned 2015 CAF Footballer of the Year
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The categories for the awards are many but at the end, CAF African Player of the Year will be the headline headlining the major headlines of the event.
The battle
Ghana’s Andre Ayew, Ivory Coast’s Yaya Toure and Gabon’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang go head to head for the biggest individual accolade on the African continent.
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Andre Ayew played as vice-captain for the Black Stars for the year under review. For club side, the Ghanaian played for French Ligue 1 club Olympique Marseille and English Premier League club Swansea City.
Yaya Toure played as captain of The Elephants on national side and Manchester City in the English Premier League for club side.
Gabon’s Pierre Emerick Aubameyang represented Les Pantheres on national level and German Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund on club level.
The statistics
The 2015 award will constitute performances from players in the second half of the 2014/2015 season and the first half of the 2015/2016 season.
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Andre Ayew – The stats
The Ghanaian player started the year 2015 with participation in the Africa Cup of Nations tournament where his Black Stars team were beaten in the final game of the tournament on penalties.
Ayew made 6 appearances in the tournament, scoring 3 goals to aid his national team in making their way to the final. The player received 2 yellow card bookings.
Andre Ayew returned to French side Olympique Marseille for the second half of the season where he played 13 games and scored 7 goals in the process. The 26-year-old received four yellow card bookings and was sent off once.
For Swansea City in the first half of the 2015/2016 season, Andre Ayew has made 20 appearances and scored 6 goals for the Welsh club. The Black Stars vice-captain was show 3 yellow cards in his early days at Swansea.
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Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – The stats
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang made 3 appearances for Gabon at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations and scored a goal in the tournament.
For his Borussia Dortmund side in the second half of the 2014/2015 season, 26-year-old Aubameyang made 21 appearances scoring 14 goals in the process. The Gabon international received 3 yellow card bookings.
The player uped his game for the first half of the 2015/2016 season to become on of Europe’s most lethal strikers.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has made 23 appearances so far and bagged 24 goals for his Borussia Dortmund side. The forward has been booked 3 times with no sending off.
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Yaya Toure – The stats
Yaya Toure and his Ivory Coast side won the 2015 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations where the midfielder made 6 appearances and scored a goal. Toure received two yellow card bookings before lifting the trophy as captain of the Ivory Coast.
The player for the second half of the 2014/2015 season played 14 games in England for Manchester City scoring four goals and a single yellow card booking for the time frame.
The former Barcelona player represented Manchester City 26 times for the first half of the 2015/2016 season. The player scores 6 goals and received 2 yellow card bookings.
*Yaya Toure retired from international football after the Africa Cup of Nations. Andre Ayew and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had some international games after the AFCON.
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Performance index
Andre Ayew
Andre Ayew scored 16 goals in 39 appearances for the games under consideration for the purpose of this analysis.
The Ghana international had a 41.025 percent chance of scoring a goal to help his team whenever he played.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
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The Borussia Dortmund forward played 47 games and scored 39 goals for games considered.
The player had an 82.979 chance of finding the back of the net anytime he took to football pitch to represent any of his sides.
Yaya Toure
The former captain of The Elephants played 46 games and scored 11 goals.
Yaya Toure’s chances of scoring a goal anytime he took to the football pitch were 23.913 percent.
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The final verdict
Football has different roles and the basis cannot be set for exact comparisons. Andre Ayew and Yaya Toure are mostly midfielders with Aubameyang leading the frontline for most occasions.
But on the basis of who performed their roles to the nearest perfection, denying Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang the 2015 CAF Footballer of the Year will only bring up one question:
HOW IS THE AWARD AWARDED?
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