{"id":72059,"date":"2014-12-10T04:27:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T04:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=72059"},"modified":"2014-12-10T04:27:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T04:27:55","slug":"2014-five-players-shortlisted-for-best-player-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=72059","title":{"rendered":"2014 &#8211; Five Players shortlisted for best player award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Five players have been shortlisted for the\u00a02014 sierraleonefootball.com\u00a0Player of the Year award after they were nominated by Sierra Leonean Sports Writers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They are Alhassan \u2018Crespo\u2019 Kamara (<a href=\"http:\/\/int.soccerway.com\/teams\/sweden\/orebro-sportklubb-fotboll\/2156\/\">\u00d6rebro<\/a>, Sweden), Alhaji \u2018Andriano\u2019 Kamara (IFK\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/int.soccerway.com\/teams\/sweden\/ildrottsforening-kamraterna-norrkoping\/2163\/\">Norrk\u00f6ping<\/a>,\u00a0Sweden), David Simbo (Al-Hilal, Sudan) John Bankole Kamara (Lamia, Greece), and Umaru &#8216;Zingalay&#8217; Bangura (Dinamo Minsk, Belarus)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">These players received the highest number of points among footballers nominated. Viewers of the\u00a0sierraleonefootball.com\u00a0website now have the chance to decide the winner of the award by voting for their choice based on performances at both club and national team levels throughout the year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is the third time in a row Umaru \u2018Zingalay\u2019 Bangura has been in the shortlist for the prestigious award while John Kamara is in the race for the second time. The rest are entering the race for the first time since the maiden award in 2012.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Voting starts on Monday 8th December 2014 and ends at midnight on 31<sup>st\u00a0<\/sup>December 2014. The player with the highest number of votes will be declared the winner in January 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The winner will be presented with a glittering trophy specially designed in United Kingdom with his name written on it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Umaru \u2018Zingalay\u2019 Bangura won the 2013 award while Kei Kamara was named the winner in 2012.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"players-profiles-2014\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Players profiles 2014<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Alhaji \u2018Andriano\u2019 Kamara<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Age 20<\/strong>:<\/span>\u00a0 Is a striker who did well at club level. He plays for Sweden top tier league side IFK\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/int.soccerway.com\/teams\/sweden\/ildrottsforening-kamraterna-norrkoping\/2163\/\">Norrk\u00f6ping<\/a>\u00a0where is regarded as one of their best strikers. He\u00a0ended the 2014 Swedish season as joint top goal scorer for his club scoring 10 goals in 26 appearances. Overall he finished the season as the 11<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0highest goal scorer.He played two matches for Leone Stars in the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in September against Ivory Coast in Abidjan and Democratic Republic of Congo in Lubumbashi respectively.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Alhassan \u2018Crespo\u2019 Kamara Age 20:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0Is a striker who had a good season in the Swedish top tier league which ended on the first day of November. He netted 14 goals in 19 appearances including the fastest hat-trick of the season to finish as the top goal scorer for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/int.soccerway.com\/teams\/sweden\/orebro-sportklubb-fotboll\/2156\/\">\u00d6rebro<\/a>\u00a0and the seventh highest scorer in Allsvenskan. He\u2019s a regular player for Leone Stars as he played all six group matches in the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers providing the assist for Mustapha Bangura to score against Ivory Coast in Abidjan in November in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.It has been reported that some European clubs have shown interest in him because of his wonderful performance at club level.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>David Simbo, Age 25:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Is a defender who can also operates in the midfield. He plays for Sudanese top tier League club Al-Hilal Omdurman. He joined the club in 2014 and immediately won a first team place. He helped Al-Hilal to win the Sudanese top tier league which finished at the end of October. He also played in the CAF Champions League group stage. At national level, he played five of the Leone Stars\u2019 matches in the group stage of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>John Bankole Kamara, Age 26:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>is a defensive midfielder who plays for Greek club Lamia. He joined Lamia few months after falling out with his coach at his former club Apollon Smyrni.\u00a0He is playing regularly at both club and national team levels. He played in Leone Stars\u2019 last four matches.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Umaru \u2018Zingalay\u2019 Bangura<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>Age 27<\/strong>:<\/span> Won the 2013 Sierra Leonean player of the year award.\u00a0He is a central defender who can also operate in midfield. Currently he plays for Belarussian Premier League side Dinamo Minsk .He is also the captain of the Sierra Leonean senior national team Leone Stars. He is a playing regularly at both club and national team levels. At club level he helped Dinamo Minsk to qualify for the 2014\/15 Uefa Europa League and reached the group stage of the competition. He played each and every minute of seven of Dinamo\u2019s Europa league games before he got injured in October. At national team level, Bangura scored the only goal from the penalty spot against Swaziland in Freetown to take Leone Stars to the second round stage of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. He also scored from the penalty spot in Leone Stars\u2019 2-0 victory at home to Seychelles in the same qualifiers.<\/p>\n<address><em>Signed:<\/em><\/address>\n<address><em>Mohamed Fajah Barrie &amp; Sulaiman Jabati<\/em><\/address>\n<p><em>By Mohamed Fajah Barrie in Freetown<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five players have been shortlisted for the\u00a02014 sierraleonefootball.com\u00a0Player of the Year award after they were nominated by Sierra Leonean Sports Writers. They are Alhassan \u2018Crespo\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":51677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671,824],"tags":[17804,16152],"class_list":["post-72059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-sports","tag-player-of-the-year-award","tag-sierraleonefootball-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}