Group brought together by Chinese company Titan Sports end Tottenham star Son Heung-min’s seven-year stranglehold on title
Qatari Asian Cup hero Akram Afif has beaten Son Heung-min and Cristiano Ronaldo to the prize of Best Footballer in Asia for 2024.
Afif, the first player from West Asia to win the award since its inception in 2013, netted a hat-trick in Qatar’s 3-1 AFC Asian Cup final success against Jordan back in February.
The tournament’s top scorer with eight goals, he was also on target in his nation’s 3-2 semi-final victory Iran.
Afif’s unofficial crowning as the continent’s best player ends the seven-year reign of South Korean superstar Son, who claimed the honour in nine of its previous 11 editions.
The two players were separated by a hair’s breadth in the voting, with Afif claiming 18 per cent of the points available from a panel of 63 Asian football experts. Tottenham Hotspur forward Son received a 16.8 per cent share of the vote, while Soufiane Rahimi, who inspired Al Ain to 2023-24 AFC Asian Champions League glory, was third with 11.4 per cent of votes.
Ronaldo and Aleksandar Mitrovic, who have both been plundering goals in the Saudi Pro League, finished fourth and fifth in the poll, respectively.
Handed out by Chinese media group Titan Sports, the honour is different to the Asian Football Confederation’s two player of the year prizes, awarded to players operating inside and outside Asia.
Afif has previously had time in Europe with Eupen, of Belgium, and Spanish clubs Villarreal and Sporting Gijón. Following an underwhelming stay on the continent, he returned to Qatar to play for boyhood club Al Sadd in 2018.
Last season, Afif scored 26 goals, the highest tally in the Qatari Stars League, as his team won the title.
After flowering for club and country over the past 12 months, the 27-year-old has said he would welcome a second crack at European football.
Afif is the first man to win the award while playing for a club from the Asian confederation. Son was with Bayer Leverkusen, in Germany, when he claimed his first BFA award in 2014, 12 months after then CSKA Moscow player, Keisuke Honda, won the inaugural prize.
Between 2014 and this year, only Honda’s fellow Japan star, Shinji Okazaki, who was honoured following his key role in Leicester City’s 2015-16 English Premier League title triumph, denied Son the accolade.
Son missed out this time after South Korea’s failure to win their first Asian Cup since 1960 meant the country’s wait for the title would extend to at least a 67th year.
Rahimi bagged his top-three spot after scoring eight goals during Morocco’s run to the semi-finals of this year’s Olympic football tournament. He scored twice when UAE club Al Ain beat Yokohama F. Marinos 5-1 in the Champions League final second-leg to win 6-3 on aggregate.
The 2024 prize relates only to the period between January 1 and August 15, as Titan Sports pivots from a calendar-year crown to one that replicates the inter-year football seasons largely employed around the world.
Ronaldo, who scored 26 goals for Al Nassr in the relevant period, received 10.8 of voting points. Serb Mitrovic, who won the 2023-24 Saudi league and cup with Al Hilal, obtained a 6.9 per share after bagging 16 goals in the applicable 8½ months.
