Liverpool hero Jamie Carragher admits he was wrong to run down the Africa Cup of Nations last week.Carragher did so when discussing the Ballon d'Or prospects of Liverpool's Egyptian striker Mohamed Salah.

He said last night on CBS: "I have got very strong opinions on the game, I love debate, and that will never change.

"But what I would never want to be described as, as a pundit, is ignorant or disrespectful so that was never my aim. And whether that's to a player, a club, a country, a continent, a continental tournament, whatever that may be.

"What I would say is, where I got it wrong was, I was clumsy describing AFCON as not a major tournament. I was trying to explain the merits of Mo Salah winning the Ballon d'Or, and I feel that not just AFCON, I would say the Asia Games, the Gold Cup, not so much the Copa America, but there are five major tournaments out there besides the World Cup that are for their continent and are a major tournament.

"But some of them don't resonate with the people who vote for the Ballon d'Or. And that for me was not an opinion, that was a fact in terms of looking who had won the Ballon d'Or in the last 40 or 50 years.

"Yes, I've been banging the drum for Mo Salah to become the first African player to win the Ballon d'Or since George Weah in the mid '90s. As I said, I should have been a lot tidier with

my language around that, so yes, that's something I'll look at.

"But as I said, you do look at the Euros, where it's at right now, and other competitions, and some of them resonate with the Ballon d'Or voters, who sometimes are journalists, national coaches, national captains.

"And one of the reasons might be, sometimes we forget, the Ballon d'Or was the European Footballer of the Year. So maybe there is a bias towards the Euros or European football in the past.

"It was definitely not my aim to offend anybody - I know I've done that a lot in the past in different guises about different players and teams. But that was certainly not the case. yes, hopefully that's now addressed it."