Ivorian Yaya Toure heads a list of 10 nominees for this year’s African Footballer of the Year award, an honour he is chasing for the third successive year.

The Manchester City midfielder was named on the shortlist yesterday by the Confederation of African Football, who organise a poll of national team coaches from all 54 African countries to decide the winner.

Toure, who this week was given an African footballer of the year award for 2013 organised by the BBC, will be favourite in a year in which there were no outstanding individual achievers.

The 30-year-old helped Ivory Coast to World Cup qualification and continued his fine form with Manchester City to become one of the leading figures in the English Premier League.

Toure would become the third player to win the African Footballer of the Year title three years in a row, matching the achievement of Ghana’s Abedi Pele from 1991-93 and Came-roon’s Samuel Eto’o in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

He faces his biggest challenge from Mohamed Aboutrika and Jonathan Pitroipa.

Aboutrika is the 35-year-old Egyptian midfielder who last month steered his club, Al Ahli, to a fifth Champions League success in the last nine years.

Pitroipa, the Rennes winger, had a near-fairytale 2013, guiding Burkina Faso to the final of the Africa Cup in February and the brink of the 2014 World Cup as they lost on away goals to Algeria in the qualifying play-offs last month.