FC Porto striker Vincent Aboubakar is the only Cameroonian player among the 11 best African players for 2017 named by France Football Magazine. Despite his heroics at the Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon, Ondoa Fabrice only made the bench of the team selected by the top journalists of the leading football magazine in France.

The starting team is dominated by players from the countries that qualified for the 2018 World Cup.Egypt has three players among the 16 stars named with goalkeeper Essam El-Hadary getting the nod ahead of Cameroon shot-stopper Fabrice Ondoa. Mohammed Salah and Ahmed Hegazy are the others from Egypt.

Morocco, who will also be playing at the World Cup have three players Nabil Dirar, Mehdi Benatia and Hakim Ziyech while Senegal has two in the likes of Kalidou Koulibaly and Sadio Mané. This clearly shows that the performance of one’s country ties into the rise in the stock of a player.

Starting team: Essam El-Hadary (Al-Taawoun, Egypt), Nabil Dirar (Monaco and Fenerbahçe, Morocco), Mehdi Benatia (Juventus, Morocco), Kalidou Koulibaly (Naples, Senegal), Faouzi Ghoualm (Naples, Algeria), Victor Moses (Chelsea, Nigeria), Naby Keita (RB Leipzig, Guinea), Jean-Michaël Seri (Nice, Côte d’ivoire), Mohamed Salah (AS Rome and Liverpool, Egypt), Vincent Aboubakar (Porto, Cameroon) and Sadio Mané (Liverpool, Senegal).

Reserves: Fabrice Ondoa (Cameroon, Seville AC), Ahmed Hegazy (Egypt, West Bromwich), Thomas Partey (Ghana, Atlético Madrid), Hakim Ziyech (Morocco, Ajax Amsterdam) and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon, Borussia Dortmund).

By Chi Prudence Asong in Paris