Nwankwo Kanu, John Obi Mikel and Yakubu Aiyegbeni have emerged the most influential African players in the English Premier League.
This was made known after The History of African Success looked back through the-history-of-african-success.com in the English Premier League.
The research was propelled by the success of Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah in the Premier League this season.
Reports said BFB used its exclusive ‘influence’ score, which awards points for appearances, match wins and Premier League titles while deducting points for match losses.
It was also good news for Kolo Toure, who was crowned as the most influential African player in Premier League history. He recorded a total influence score of 925 points, beating out Chelsea legends Didier Drogba on 760 points and John Obi Mikel on 665 points.
The top 10 most influential African players in the Premier League of all time are:
1) Kolo Toure – Arsenal, Liverpool – Ivory Coast – 925 points
2) Didier Drogba – Chelsea – Ivory Coast – 700 points
3) John Obi Mikel – Chelsea – Nigeria – 665 points
4) Yaya Toure – Man City – Ivory Coast – 636 points
5) Emmanuel Adebayor – Arsenal,Man City, Tottenham – Togo – 557 points
6) Nwankwo Kanu – Arsenal – Nigeria – 537 points
7) Michael Essien – Chelsea – Ghana – 495 points
8) Yakubu Aiyegbeni – Everton – Nigeria – 381 points
9) Victor Wanyama – Tottenham – Kenya – 318 points
10) Sadio Mane – Southampton, Liverpool – Senegal – 269 points
Meanwhile, a close look at the nationalities of the most successful players revealed that Nigeria is the biggest supplier of Premier League talent, with 6 players in the Top 24 shortlist.
Cote d’Ivoire comes in second place with 5 players, while Ghana and Senegal are tied in the third place with 3 player representatives each.
In terms of which nation has scored the most goals though, Cote d’Ivoire narrowly beats Nigeria into first place, with 194 goals to Nigeria’s 184 goals.
Togo reaches third place with 97 goals solely thanks to the efforts of Emmanuel Adebayor.
The top 5 goals scored is as follows:
1) Ivory Coast – 194 goals – Didier Drogba (104 goals)
2) Nigeria – 184 goals – Yakubu Aiyegbeni (95 goals)
3) Togo – 97 goals – Emmanuel Adebayor (97 goals)
4) Ghana – 51 goals – Tony Yeboah (24 goals)
5) Senegal – 45 goals – Sadio Mane ( 43 goals)
To make the shortlist, players had to be of clear African heritage and have a minimum of 30 club appearances.
