Ismail Matar, the Al Wahda and UAE forward, was one of 15 players named on the provisional shortlist for the Asian Football Confederation's (AFC) Player of the Year award yesterday.
Japan's Keisuke Honda and Takashi Inui are the front-runners for the prize, while Server Djeparov of Uzbekistan, the 2008 winner, is also on the list along with Matar, Iraq's Younus Mahmoud, China's Deng Zhouxiang and Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Noor.
Honda emerged as Japan's key player at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where he scored two goals and set up another as the Blue Samurai reached the last 16 for their best result on foreign soil. He was also named the most valuable player at the Asian Cup in Doha in January, when Japan lifted a record fourth continental title.
The 23-year-old Inui scored 34 goals in 120 games in the J-League and signed for the German club VfL Bochum in July.
Matar, who has been on the shortlist each year since 2006, has been out of action since May after undergoing knee surgery.
The AFC will revise the list again next month after the 2014 Fifa World Cup Asian qualifiers, Olympic qualifiers, AFC Champions League and AFC Cup matches. The award, won last year by the Australian defender Sasa Ognenovski, will be presented at a November 23 ceremony in Kuala Lumpur.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
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