The Asian Footballer of the Year is an annual prize awarded to the best Asian player in a calendar year, organized by

International Federation of Football History & Statistics The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) is an organisation that chronicles the history and records of association football. It was founded in 1984 by Alfredo Pöge in Leipzig. The IFFHS was based in Abu Dhabi for so ...

(IFFHS) and

Asian Football Confederation The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly i ...

(AFC).

History

The origin of the award was an unofficial poll launched to mark the first edition of a football handbook in 1985. The award began in 1988 through IFFHS with sport magazines and journalists, then the presenter was changed to the AFC in 1994. Since 2005, the award gives its qualification to nominees who attend the awards ceremony, and so the rule caused much controversy about excluding players who could not attend the ceremony by playing for European clubs. Among them, Park Ji-sung and

Shunsuke Nakamura is a Japanese former professional footballer. He is the only person to have been named J.League Most Valuable Player more than once, receiving the award in 2000 and 2013. Steve Perryman once remarked that Nakamura "could open a tin of beans wi ...

were nominated for

Ballon d'Or The Ballon d'Or (; ) is an annual association football, football award presented by French news magazine ''France Football'' since 1956. Between 2010 and 2015, in an agreement with FIFA, the award was temporarily merged with the FIFA World Pl ...

. The AFC is awarding the "International Player of the Year" award to reduce the controversy since 2012, but AFC awards were still having problems that the process and criteria of selection were obscure. Eventually, the "

Best Footballer in Asia Best Footballer in Asia () is an annual association football award organized and presented by Titan Sports (newspaper), Titan Sports. It is awarded to the player who had the best performance for Asian football during the previous calendar year ...

" award inspired by Ballon d'Or was made in 2013. When continental confederations including AFC cancelled their awards ceremony due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

in 2020, IFFHS restarted to select the Players of the Year about the world and each continent.

Winners

IFFHS award (1988–present)

AFC award (1994–present)

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International AFC award (2012–present)

Statistics

Multiple winners

The asterisk means international winner.

Wins by nationality

Notes

References

External links

Asian Player of the Year
at

RSSSF The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) is an international organization dedicated to collecting statistics about association football. The foundation aims to build an exhaustive archive of football-related information from around th ...

{{AFC Asian International Player of the Year Asian Football Confederation trophies and awards *Asian AFC

Footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...