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FC Nantes of France winger, Moses Simon has received fresh recognition of honour for his exploits at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon, as an independent statistics website has named him among the competition’s best 11 players, megasportsarena.com reports.
Although Simon was not included in the official AFCON 2021 All-Stars’ squad named by the technical study group of Confederation of African Football (CAF), he has been compensated to an extent with a spot provided for him by Whoscored.com.
This comes after the hugely-respected website named the Kaduna-born former SK Trencin of Slovakia, KAA Gent of Belgium and Levante of Spain dazzler in their AFCON 2021 team of the tournament despite Nigeria’s early elimination from the competition.
Simon, who was involved in the four matches for the Eagles, three of which he started, won one man of the match award and played for a total of 213 minutes, turned out to be Nigeria’s most fearsome most potent attacking threat with his pace and trickery.
Though he failed to make hay in the Eagles’ round of 16 loss to Tunisia, Simon ended with a goal and one assist, which has qualified him for a spot in the unofficial best 11 roll call that is dominated by new champions, Senegal.
While The Teranga Lions, losing finalists in 202 and 2019, before beating Egypt via penalties on Sunday in Cameroon, have four players, Morocco and Ivory Coast are next in line with two each, but Nigeria, Egypt and Cameroon have one each.
The website also named Simon as man of the match in Nigeria’s 3-1 win against Sudan, with a rating of 9.05 and standout player in the 2-0 victory over Guinea Bissau with 7.9, despite him having played only the last 33 minutes.
Simon is deployed as an attacking midfielder in a 4-4-2 formation, along with Cote d’Ivoire’s Ibrahim Sangaré from PSV Eindhoven of Netherlands and Nicolas Pepe from Arsenal of England, as well as Morocco’s Sofiane Boufal from Angers of France.
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