‘Return my award’ – Obi Mikel tells Yaya Toure on 2013 CAF Player of the Year

Former Nigerian midfielder, John Obi Mikel still believed he was robbed of the CAF African Player of the Year in 2013.

Mikel has been vocal in the past about losing the award to Yaya Toure and the former Chelsea star has petitioned the Manchester City icon to return the award for him.

While discussing current Super Eagles striker Victor Osimhen’s chances of winning the African Player of the Year award this year, Mikel recounted his fustrations.

“Yeah, he needs to mail that [African Player of the Year] trophy to me,” he said on his ObiOne podcast.

 “It was my trophy to be won. I won the Africa Cup of Nations, I won the Champions League the year before that and I won the Europa League that year, while Yaya didn’t win anything.

“Coming into the ceremony, I thought I was winning. The information was I was going to win it. I was the favourite to win it; my agent said ‘you’ve won it’ and I was told by CAF that I was winning it.

“But the crazy thing is that it was the first time a player would do a hat-trick of winning, so they had to give it Yaya.

“He was from Ivory Coast, and the CAF president then was Isa Hayatou, and he was from Ivory Coast. I thought I was winning because I had an amazing year, we were winning everything at Chelsea and I was playing most of the games.

“I was a starter, I won the Africa Cup of Nations, I had an amazing year, and I thought this was going to be my year. I think I got robbed. Definitely, I got robbed of that trophy.”