Atalanta star Ademola Lookman has been named as one of the candidates for the African Footballer of the Year award, where he is the hot favourite.

The other nominees for the award are Simon Adingra (Brighton and Hove Albion and Ivory Coast), Serhou Guirassy (Borussia Dortmund and Guinea), Achraf Hakimi (PSG and Morocco) and Ronwen Williams (Mamelodi Sundowns and South Africa).

The winner in 2023 was Napoli and Nigeria striker Victor Osimhen, who was fresh from securing the Scudetto as Serie A Capocannoniere.

Lookman was crucial in helping La Dea win the Europa League over the summer, scoring a sensational hat-trick in the Final 3-0 victory over Bayer Leverkusen in Dublin.

He was also instrumental in Atalanta’s push to the Coppa Italia Final, losing 1-0 to Juventus, and fourth place in Serie A with qualification for the Champions League.

The 27-year-old scored 17 goals with 10 assists in 45 club games last season.

He contributed three goals and an assist in Nigeria’s run to the Final of the Africa Cup of Nations, losing 2-1 to the Ivory Coast.

This all allowed Lookman to finish 14th in the Ballon d’Or tally for 2024.

Although born and raised in England, Lookman opted to represent Nigeria at international level.

Former Belgium, Tottenham Hotspur and Ajax defender Toby Alderweireld has revealed that he decided to end his international career after believing he was “going to die”.

The 35-year-old Alderweireld, who still plays for Royal Antwerp in the Belgian league, quit international soccer in March 2023 after winning 127 caps.

He was part of the so-called “Golden Generation” of players who finished third at the 2018 World Cup. He also took part in the 2014 and 2022 editions.

Alderweireld said a first serious warning about his health came after a defeat in a Belgian Cup match against Union Saint-Gilloise.

“That’s why I quit the Devils,” he told Belgian media VRT.

“I couldn’t sleep that night and went to the club early the next morning to do a strength session,” he recalled. “Before I left, I took a caffeine pill because I don’t like coffee. When I was in the car, my heart suddenly started beating at a rate of a thousand an hour. I thought: I’m going to have a heart attack. I’m done for, I’m never going to see my children again. I pulled over, walked into a furniture store and asked if they could call 911.”

Some time later, Alderweireld said panic took over him again, this time at night.

“It turned out that all the stress made my heart pound,” he told the broadcaster. “That gave me a panic attack, which made my heart beat even faster. You actually drive yourself crazy. And at a certain point you think you’re going to have a heart attack and die.”

Alderweireld later underwent medical examinations.

“We did extreme tests, but everything was okay,” he said. “Then I started talking to people and they said it was due to too much stress. Purely a panic attack. Now I still suffer from that sometimes, but I can accept that because I know it’s nothing.”

The West Australia

France manager Didier Deschamps insisted Kylian Mbappe can play as a centre-forward even though some may call him crazy.

The Real Madrid forward was shockingly left out of France’s squad for November’s Nations League fixtures against Israel and Italy, but that didn’t keep Mbappe’s name out of the headlines. After refusing to elaborate on the omission of his captain, who is fully fit but in poor form, Deschamps did offer his opinion on the hotly debated topic of how to get the most out of the 25-year-old.

Following a 3-1 victory over Italy at San Siro on Sunday night – which saw Paris Saint-Germain’s Randal Kolo Muani start up front alongside Inter striker Marcus Thuram – Deschamps was quizzed on Mbappe’s best position.

“He can play in several positions,” the defiant French coach told Telefoot, “after that it’s a question of association. You might tell me that I’m ‘crazy’ to put him as a centre forward but he also played centre forward with his last two club coaches.

“He doesn’t have [Olivier] Giroud’s profile, of course, so it all depends on which team we’re playing against. When he’s in the centre, he has a preference for the left centre rather than the right centre even though I saw him at Real Madrid rather occupying the right centre. It’s a balance of positions [but you have to] always leave a lot of freedom.”

Mbappe ended the long-running transfer saga by leaving PSG to join Real Madrid on a free last summer. After a goal on his debut against Atalanta in the UEFA Super Cup, the high-profile striker has struggled to live up to the lofty expectations which he set in Paris.

“He is in a complicated situation,” Deschamps said of Mbappe, who boasts eight goals in 16 games across all competitions this season. “He is supposed to find everything that he could have done very well even if he was also less effective [at times] in 2024.”

Real Madrid’s 4-0 Clasico thrashing at the hands of Barcelona was a particular nadir for Mbappe, who squandered a glut of chances and was memorably caught offside eight times. The Frenchman again drew a blank in Madrid’s dismal Champions League defeat to AC Milan before skirting around the fringes of a home win over Osasuna on the eve of the international break.

Despite overlooking Mbappe for France’s fixtures this month, Deschamps was optimistic that his captain would rediscover his best form. “I hope so and I don’t see why he wouldn’t come back,” the manager said. “He has a complicated, more difficult period, but he has everything to do what he did again.”

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