The Nigerian was one of the most outstanding African players of the last season, winning the Premier league title and reaching the FA Cup Final with the Blues, in addition to playing an integral part in the Super Eagles' qualification for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Instead, CAF's final shortlist has Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, while Moses -- who is the only one of the quartet with a winners medal in his cabinet -- has been squeezed out.

To be clear, all three nominated players were outstanding in the year under review, especially Egypt's Salah. But from the point of view of football achievements, Moses deserved to have made that final three on the basis of a break out season last year.

Talented as he has been acknowledged to be, the Nigerian had never quite unfurled the natural ability that convinced Chelsea to open their cheque-books to lure him away from Wigan Athletic five years ago.

Instead, the club had been forced to loan him out to Liverpool, Stoke, and then West Ham, in successive seasons since 2013. That is, until Antonio Conte came to Chelsea with his three-back formation and its reliance on wingbacks.

Moses found his game and abilities perfectly suited to Conte's tactics. His work rate meant he could drop back, tuck in and provide an additional body in defence, his pace and lungs allowed him to track opposing players, while his skill took him past opposition defenders with ease.

It was the perfect cocktail being blended together at the right time by the manager, to suit a player who was the exact fit for the position. And Moses excelled in the role. Three goals, two assists, and a passing success rate of nearly 80 percent from 34 games, was a more than handsome return.

That goal tally was half the career-high total he had managed with Wigan in 2012, and matched those six strikes at Stoke in 2015. On both previous occasions, he was deployed as a forward rather than his current position as a pseudo defender.

Odion Ighalo and Victor Moses Kabiru Abubakar/fotodezamora

At international level, Moses stacks up fairly evenly with the others, despite Nigeria failing to participate at the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon. From his four appearances in Nigeria's excellent World Cup qualifying run, the Super Eagle notched three goals.

Senegal's Mane got four from a combined 10 games in World Cup qualifying and Afcon. And his team, highly favoured to win the competition at the start, only got as far as the quarterfinals, where they fired blanks in a penalty shootout loss to Cameroon, with Mane missing a decisive kick.

Aubameyang also managed just two in a combined seven games of World Cup qualifying and Afcon, despite playing at home. The Gabon striker's sensational 31-goal tally for Borussia Dortmund may have weighed heavily in his favour against Moses.

But Dortmund struggled, despite his goalscoring, and failed to win a trophy. Mane's Liverpool were equally empty-handed.

For a hybrid player working both ends of the pitch and delivering one major trophy, plus a runners-up finish in another, Moses deserved to be in the final running for that gong. Not to mention his contributions to Nigeria's excellent World Cup qualifying run.

Salah is already heavily favoured to win it, and few will argue if he does.

But, CAF's shortlist proves that when it comes down to it, the glamour of headline-grabbing, individual goalscoring trumps the virtues of team play and winning trophies.