Kenyan international Eric ‘Marcelo’ Ouma narrowly missed out on the defender of the year award in the Swedish top tier end-of-season awards, losing to Djurgården’s Hjalmar Ekdal on Tuesday evening.Ouma had been nominated for the award alongside his teammate and club captain Alexander Milošević and the Djurgården’s defender.The former Gor Mahia left-back featured in all but one of the 30 games for AIK, being subbed off only once.In the 29 games that he has featured in, he helped AIK to keep 11 clean sheets and scored once against IFK Göteborg, providing assists in five other instances.The Kenyan international missed in only the 1-0 win against IK Sirius in the first leg due to suspension.While the Harambee Stars defender featured in 29 league games, Milošević played in 27 games while the 23-year old Ekdal featured in 26, starting in 25 of those.Milošević led the clean sheet standings for the three defenders with 12, as Marcelo followed with 11, and Ekdal has the least of them all with10.Ekdal, however, had four goals to his name in the league but did not set up any, while Milošević had three and one assist, and Marcelo had the most goals involvement of the three with one goal and five assists.Mjällby AIF’s custodian Carljohan Eriksson was voted the goalkeeper of the year in the Allsvenskan, as Magnus Eriksson double up as the MVP and the midfielder of the year. IFK Norrköping’s Samuel Adegbenro was named the forward of the year as Malmö FF’s Veljko Birmancevic took home the young player of the year award with Kalmar FF’s Henrik Rydström winning the coach of the year gong.
