How does Aubameyang compare to Africa’s greatest strikers?

The Borussia Dortmund striker has earned a place in the Goal 50, but can he be considered on the level of the likes of Samuel Eto'o, Didier Drogba and George Weah?

As the reigning African Footballer of the Year, and after being named in the Goal 50, it is only natural to ponder exactly where Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang stands in the pantheon of African football’s great strikers.

After all, the noughties essentially came to be defined by the relative duopoly of Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba, two fearsome forwards who were leading lights for both club and country. Interestingly, their paths often crossed in the Champions League with Barcelona and Chelsea respectively, making for gripping contrast.

Since then, it has been Manchester City midfielder, icon and outcast Yaya Toure snapping up every gong going up until last year, when Aubameyang wrested the crown away. This time, Leicester City winger Riyad Mahrez will run the Gabon star closest.

There really is no apparent Aubameyang rival on the continent in this era as far as strikers go. Therefore, one can only examine him against what has come before.

To date, Aubameyang doesn't have the honours - either as part of successful teams or as an individual - to compete with some of the continent's all-time greats.

What he does have is numbers and, specifically, a goalscoring haul in the Bundesliga to match the very best.

The forward's victory in the African Footballer of the Year award was not due to a Champions League success, a continental conquest or a league triumph, but down to goals in a major European league; a cold, hard currency that few in the history of the continental game can match.

Consider this. Last season, Aubameyang scored 25 goals in a single Bundesliga campaign. As part of two sensational Barcelona sides, Samuel Eto'o and Salif Keita only twice scored more in a single season, while Didier Drogba only once beat that tally, when he scored 29 goals for Chelsea in the 2009-10 season.

African football has been dominated by essentially two kinds of forward historically; wiry, skilful athletic types like Laurent Pokou and Milla, and the zippy physicality of Weah, Eto’o and Drogba. While there was occasionally some overlap - Eto’o had a lot of skill, for example, while Milla was quite powerful - Aubameyang is peculiar in that he inhabits neither of these classifications completely.

He seems to straddle the divide - fast, but not powerful, athletic and agile, but not overly gifted technically. He seems thoroughly European in his style, surely a bequeathal of his birth and upbringing in France. All explosive movement and change of pace, his development into a pressing and poaching machine at Borussia Dortmund has in many ways made it hard for him to roar on the continent with Gabon.

While the German side rely on a suffocating counterpress, and have the personnel to spring their quicksilver forward in behind opposing defences once the ball is won, Gabon in particular, and African football in general requires a lot more variation and involvement. Rashidi Yekini, quintessential poacher that he was, could also hold his own in deeper areas, dropping off the front to drag defenders around and open space.

More as a virtue of his style than of his ability, Aubameyang has struggled to elevate the Panthers. Granted, there is only so much a nation ranked 110th in the world can do. However, it is hard to shake the sense, watching Gabon, that the Panthers are a team very much playing as a lesser whole than the sum of its parts.

Marooned upfront, the 27-year-old often cuts an isolated figure, waiting eternally for that arcing through ball to latch onto or the low fizzing pass across the six-yard box to turn home. It almost never comes.

Perhaps a change of position would improve things, but Gabon have already tried shifting Aubameyang out wide. While the experiment began encouragingly, with an exciting 2-0 win over Burkina Faso at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations, Gabon's progress ultimately ground to a halt and they were eliminated after losing their next two games to Equatorial Guinea and Congo, leaving in their wake a legacy of missed chances and shanked shots.

This inability to decisively impact on proceedings with the national team dulls Aubameyang’s golden sheen somewhat, particularly compared to some of the aforementioned hitmen. After all, Weah led little-fancied Liberia to the brink of World Cup qualification in 2001 and also secured a first-ever qualification for the Cup of Nations.

Gabon have, of course, been at the two of the last three Afcons, but only had to go through qualifying once (they got in as co-host in 2012) and will host next year’s edition.

When they did have to lay the groundwork themselves, Aubameyang only scored in one of six qualifiers and failed to better that - shining only with a hat-trick of penalties in one game - in qualification for the 2014 World Cup.

He is yet to dominate a tournament in the manner Pokou and Keita did in the 1960s and 70s, and has set no records of note with the national team. He may not have had the benefit of a stellar supporting cast like Drogba had, but this was a team that, prior to the 2015 Afcon, was tipped as a potential dark horse - hardly jobbers.

National teams are often caught in a trap of dependency on their star players - a phenomenon both Eto’o and Drogba and, before them, Milla can identify with - and understandably so, with little time to build team cohesion. However, Gabon can hardly depend on Aubameyang; instead, he depends on them, and unless he adapts his game, it is a quirk that will keep him from glimpsing true greatness.

Aubameyang will remain a great African striker, but may never be regarded as a great striker in Africa.