CAF has cut the list down to ten players who will be competing for the 2025 African Player of the Year award. The award goes to the best footballing talent in Africa who have been outstanding both for club and country in the last year. These are the finalists:
Frank Anguissa (Cameroon – Napoli)
Fiston Mayele (DR Congo – Pyramids FC)
Mohamed Salah (Egypt – Liverpool)
Denis Bouanga (Gabon – Los Angeles FC)
Serhou Guirassy (Guinea – Borussia Dortmund)
Achraf Hakimi (Morocco – Paris Saint-Germain)
Oussama Lamlouhi (Tunisia – Étoile du Sahel)
Victor Osimhen (Nigeria – Galatasaray)
Iliman Ndiaye (Senegal – Everton)
Pape Matar Sarr (Senegal – Tottenham Hotspur)
The 2025 race will see a very interesting mixture of the two groups of players i.e. the experienced ones and the young stars. While Salah and Hakimi are still the face of Africa in top Europe, Osimhen is proving his great goal-scoring ability again in Turkey.
One of the arguments in favor of Guirassy and Mayele is their respective goal-scoring exploits in the Bundesliga and African club competitions.
At the same time, the emergence of Sarr and Ndiaye, two Senegalese players, is a sign that the new generation of African players will be the future, and this makes the fight for the most prestigious individual award in Africa the closest it has ever been in the last years.
