AFC Awards! And how much it reflects the real deal! I think this awards are not fairly representation of Asian football. Instead of being given by merits, it is like it is given as favors. Japan, Korea and sometimes Australia have been given decent representation but nations like Iran, Uzbekistan and Iraq have been under represented to glorify Persian Gulf rich state and China obviously for marketability and in some cases political reasons. A quick look at the nominations for past 5 years shows some truth about the odd selections. 1. Instead of keeping Asian player of the year it has been split to two category of Asian international player of the year and Asian footballer of the year. What is the reason? Certainly it is because the previous selection would not give an space for certain footballers who won't go out of their league or shine in Europe. So to glorify them they split this award and then keep Asian footballer of the year award exclusively for some selective countries! Their players needed something to celebrate! 2. Use some Korean-Japanese and rarely Iranian nominee to cover the whole scheme. Now that the big Asian players in Europe are getting their rewards nobody give a damn about this Asian footballer of year award and they can glorify their own players from those selective countries and ignore the rest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Footballer_of_the_Year Asian footballer of the year Asian international player of the year Every one can come here and give their reason why they think this reward have been selected not on fair basis. I am going to show AFC bias toward Iranian players in particular. To just show some biased about Iran in particular Sardar Azmoun and Reza Gucci both shined in Europe but they got no nomination call ever. You can compare it yourself. 2015 Asian international player of the year Son Heung Min 9 NT goals (5 against Laos and one vs Myanmar) - 33 appearance and 11 goals in club level (Premier league and ECL) Ki Sung Yueng 3 NT goals (2 against Laos) - 34 appearance and 6 goals in club level (Premier League) Massimo Luongo 2 NT goals - 30 appearances and 6 goals in club level (English 3rd and 2nd divisions) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sardar Amzoun 7 NT goals (2 against Guam 1 vs India) - 25 appearance and 7 goals in club level (RPL) 2016 Asian international player of the year Shinji Okazaki 2 NT goals (1 against Afghanistan) - 44 appearance and 8 goals in club level (Premier league and ECL) Son Heung Min 1 NT goals - 47 appearance and 11 goals in club level (Premier League, EL and ECL) Shinji Kagawa 4 NT goals - 31 appearances and 9 goals in club level (Bundesliga, EL and EL) Sardar Amzoun 8 NT goals (1 against India) - 39 appearance and 13 goals in club level (RPL, EL and ECL) Reza Gucci 2 NT goals - 31 appearance and 10 goals in club level (Eredivisie and Championship) Reza Ghoochanejad scored 22 goals for Hereenveen in 2016-2017 Season of Eredivisie and he was second top goal scorer of Dutch league. Still no award or even nomination was given to Azmoun or Gucci. This year Asian footballer of the year was very close for Mehdi Taremi who has been PGPL top scorer for two consecutive times and the top Asian Champions League scorer with 7 goals until he was suspended mysteriously right before the match vs Al Hilal! He also scored 3 NT goals and brought his international goals to 10. He was not even given a nomination chance despite scoring 25 goals for his club in league and AFC champions league plus 3 NT goals in WCQs. Omar Abdul Rahman and Wu Lei got a nomination instead of him and Omar Kharbin was given the reward.
in Luongo's defence, he was the MVP at the Asian cup that year and plays as a defensive midfielder at QPR so obviously goals aren't exactly the correct barometer to judge him on. Ian Holloway (his manager) as said on multiple occasions that he's their best player and the best midfielder in the Championship - obviously he is bias, but it does say a lot - so he isn't just some meddling player that got unwarranted attention. Luongo hasn't really progressed for the national team since 2015 as our midfield is the only position where we have huge depth and competition but 2015 was a huge year for him. All trolling aside, i've said this before that Sardar needs to get out of that Russian league if he wants to progress as a player and get more spotlight on him. While the Eredivsie is supposed to be a developmental league and not somewhere you want a player that is the finished article to be playing in unless that's their ceiling OR if they're playing in the champions league regularly for Ajax/PSV/Feyenoord etc. Just my opinion though.