Reuters Soccer Blog

Frederic Kanoute was declared winner of last Friday’s African Footballer of the Year award, but the Malian is also the unfortunate loser in what reports and sources say was a serious abuse of power.

Confederation of African Football insiders say Didier Drogba garnered more votes and was due to win for a second successive year.

However, Drogba says he refused to leave the African Nations Cup to attend the award ceremony and Kanoute was handed the award instead. CAF deny this.

It is tragic for Kanoute really because if a detailed analysis is made of achievements in 2007, he probably deserved the accolade anyway.

The award is voted for by coaches from Africa’s 53 member countries although in past years less than 50 percent have returned their ballots.

The award has become a farce, a far cry from its origins and the strict accountability it had for decades.

Drogba says a high ranking CAF official called to say that if the Chelsea striker did not make the award ceremony he would be dumped as winner.

There is no reason to doubt him, but CAF deny such a call was made.

Drogba did not see the point of spending a day travelling to and from his team’s training base in Ghana’s Takoradi to Lome in neighbouring Togo where the awards had been scheduled.

CAF battle at the best of times to get nominees to attend the gala because so many are based in Europe and find it hard to get time off from their clubs.

CAF thought it would be clever to host the ceremony during the Nations Cup where all the nominees would be in action. But then they decided to hold it in Lome instead of Ghana’s capital Accra, against good sense.

The credibility of the award is dying a rapid death.

“CAF has the right to make any changes it wants,” said CAF communications director Suleiman Habuba in a TV interview this week.

So the coach’s vote is a farce then?

The award was started in 1970 by the magazine ‘France Football’, which ensured a proper plebiscite of representatives from each African country for more than two decades.

France Football sadly dropped the award just over 10 yeas ago, leaving CAF to take it over.

At first CAF used to poll its committee members to determine the winner and then came up with the idea of enlisting the coaches a few years ago.

Sporadically they have published the results but there has been a scent of skullduggery around the poll for some time now.

That scent is now a stench if the reports are true. Pity poor old king Kanoute. He deserved a lot better.

Mark Gleeson is covering the African Nations Cup in Ghana for Reuters. Click here for our site devoted to the finals 

PHOTO: Mali’s Kanoute holds his 2007 African Footballer of the Year award in Lome, Feb. 2  REUTERS/Luc Gnago