In the history of AFCON, the competition’s top goalscorer has played for the overall winners on 17 occasions: the names of Christopher Katongo and Emmanuel Mayuka (Zambia, 2012), Gedo (Egypt 2010), Francileudo Santos (Tunisia 2004) and Patrick M’Boma and Salomon Olembe (Cameroon 2002) come to mind.
The last player to do it was Nigeria’s Emmanuel Emenike in 2013 — also the last time his nation won the AFCON. Coincidentally, Nigeria’s other two triumphs also saw one of their players top the goalscoring charts: Segun Odegbami in 1980 and Rashidi Yekini in 1994.
Yekini and Odegbami are Nigeria’s all-time top goalscorers with 37 and 23 goals respectively, followed by Yakubu and Victor Osimhen with 21 each. The Napoli striker’s latest goal came in Nigeria’s opening match vs Equatorial Guinea — but in the next four games, he has failed to find the net.
For a superstar African striker, scoring only one goal as his side reaches the AFCON semi-finals might seem like an underperformance. However, Osimhen has still been operating at a very high level — it’s just the goals that are missing.
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