Ghanaian football star, Michael Essien(photo), receives the BBC’s African Footballer of the Year award in his home country on Monday 4 June. The awards ceremony takes place at the Alisa Hotel, North Ridge in Accra, at 12.00 local time (13.00 GMT), followed, at 16.00 GMT, with Essien’s exclusive appearance live on the BBC World Service African sports programme Fast Track, when he will answer questions from sports fans.
Essien’s club coach at Chelsea football club, Jose Mourniho, gave an interview to today’s (1 June) edition of Fast Track, in which he was full of praise for his player:
"People like to speak about Essien because they think he is a great football player but I prefer to say that he is a great man.
"We are very happy to have him with us and I think Ghana should be very proud about him not just because he is a great player but also he has got a behaviour which is good for society."
BBC Africa Sport editor Farayi Mungazi said: "We at the BBC take pride in this award because it is the only one decided exclusively by the fans."
Michael Essien won the BBC’s African Footballer of the Year award for 2006. Over 12,000 listeners voted in the poll organised by the bbc.co.uk/africanfootball website and Fast Track.
Previous winners of the BBC African Footballer of the Year include Egypt’s Mohamed Barakat, Samuel Osei Kuffour of Ghana, Senegal’s El-Hadji Diouf and Nigeria’s Jay Jay Okocha who was voted the best twice, in 2003 and 2004.
Source: BBC.
Photo credit: Wikipedia.
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