45
Sports
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017
Riyad Mahrez: The high-rise
desert fox takes on Africa
CAIRO: Egypt’s Mohamed Salah takes part in a training
session prior to the international friendly football match
between Egypt and Tunisia at the Cairo International
Stadium. —AFP
‘The Egyptian Messi’:
Salah’s star rising
MILAN: He may have failed to impress Jose Mourinho, but
Mohamed Salah has the chance at the Africa Cup of Nations to
demonstrate just why he has been hailed as the ‘Egyptian Messi’.
“Salah looks great,” Egypt coach Hector Cuper told the asroma.it
website on Wednesday. “If he continues the way he’s going, he
can become one of the best players in the world. I would love
that for him.”
For most, including Chelsea’s demanding fans, Salah probably
doesn’t even belong in a sentence that includes the names of
Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. But one thing is for sure: since
his departure from Chelsea, the 24-year-old’s star is on the rise.
Roma’s fans owe a big thank you to Mourinho, who handed Salah
a resolute ‘thanks but no thanks’ note in February 2015 after just
13 appearances, following an initial 11 million euros move from
FC Basel 13 months earlier.
Italian supporters are big fans of the faster-paced English
game, and when Salah came to Serie A, he was welcomed with
open arms. Salah has since repaid their affection with relentless
energy, lightning pace, great ball control and an eye for goal that
saw him bag a maiden Serie A hat-trick last month as he continues to build an increasingly strong rapport with Roma striker Edin
Dzeko. Voted Roma’s player of the year in 2016, Salah has
become an integral part of the club’s push for a first title since
2001. It is 15 years since Francesco Totti drove Roma to just their
third ‘scudetto’, and in the 40-year-old club icon’s 25th and probably final season, Roma are Juventus’s biggest title challengers.
Salah certainly feels more at home at the Stadio Olimpico than at
Stamford Bridge. Despite flashes of brilliance, including scoring
his first Chelsea goal in a 6-0 win over bitter London rivals Arsenal
after replacing Oscar, Salah never impressed Mourinho.
Revived career
Little did he know it, but after switching numbers from 15 to
17 when Eden Hazard took number 10 at the start of the following season, Salah’s time in a Chelsea shirt was almost up. He
made only three appearances in the 2014-2015 season and by
February was on his way to Florence in a bid to revive a career
that had blossomed at Basel, where he scored three times against
Chelsea in Europe in successive seasons.
Salah signed an 18-month loan deal, settling in quickly with a
series of crucial goals including a brace in a 2-1 Italian Cup semifinal first leg win over Juventus and a goal against Tottenham in
the Europa League that secured Fiorentina’s entry to the round o
16. Coach Vincenzo Montella, now at AC Milan, must have felt like
Christmas had come again.—AFP
SARCELLES: “Riyad Mahrez? He’s an
example!” goes the mantra in
Sarcelles, a north Parisian housing
project where strings of high-rise
blocks were built in the 1950s and
1960s primarily to accommodate
French settlers from Algeria. It was in
this town 16km north of Paris that the
Algerian international was born and
raised, and the Premier League winner
with Leicester who will be one of the
stars of the upcoming African Cup of
Nations continues to inspire.
At AAS Sarcelles, Mahrez’s first club,
the young wannabe footballers all
seem to favour their left feet, like their
idol, now 25. On one of the football
pitches belonging to the multi-faceted
Sarcelles sports club, the regional
under-16 team fight to talk about
Mahrez, and the praise is, unsurprisingly, high. Sekou and Yanis, naturally
left-sided attacking midfielders,
express their admiration for the path
trodden by a player long ignored as a
youth because of what was deemed a
puny physique.
Mahrez stagnated in Sarcelles’ second or third teams, plying his trade in
the wider Paris region until he was 18
before touching down in England five
years later, after spells at Quimper and
Le Havre. Mohamed, yet another ‘leftie’, speaks of the ‘street’ style Mahrez
has maintained despite going professional. “When he’s in front of a player,
you know he’s going to skin him,” he
said. “It’s his speciality and I love it!
Imagine you’re facing a defender, you
do a step-over, change direction and
he falls: the crowd goes nuts! It’s too
cool.” Faysal Abdelwahbi, 23, a childhood friend of Mahrez’s, was adamant
that “everything started here”. “All the
things he does to defenders in England,
we were on the receiving end right
back in the beginning. That step-over
dribble against Manchester United,
sending (Chelsea’s Cesar) Azpilicueta
the wrong way, or really taking (Martin)
Demichelis to the cleaners...” he reminisced to general hilarity.
‘Source of pride’
And Faysal doesn’t want to forget
the significance of the African Player
of the Year award handed to a dualnational brought up in the “most cosmopolitan city in the world!” “That
someone from Sarcelles manages to
shine on a world level is a source of
massive pride for us,” said Mohamed
Coulibaly, the current Sarcelles coach.
“You mustn’t forget the French side
because he remains a Franco-Algerian.
It’s a good image for the city, given all
you hear, the stigmatization that it can
bring. It shows there is talent in sport.
We’d love that to shine through in
other areas.” His Sarcelles friends all
concurred that Mahrez, from a very
young age, was convinced he would
succeed, even when the going got
tough.
“Most of the youngsters of his generation had signed for a club, but not
him,” said Hayel Mbemba, 30, who
worked at Mahrez’s Chantereine secondary school supervising the
teenagers. “And despite that, Riyad
swore on his life and that of his mum
ABUJA: Algerian and Leicester forward Riyad Mahrez poses for a photo after
being crowned African Footballer of the Year. — AFP
that he’d become a professional. “We
weren’t optimistic then, but now he’s
achieved it, we can only have respect
for him.” Mahrez’s thirst for success
increased after the death of his
Algerian father Ahmed, his most fervent backer, in 2006. “That gave him
strength. He really did it for him, for
me, the family,” says his big brother
Wahid, 30. And choosing to represent
Algeria was something he did “for his
dad”. “What made the difference was
that he always had a ball with him,”
added another childhood friend,
Sofiane Seghiri. “When you were 16 to
18 years old and went out, you wanted
to have fun with your mates, go and
see some girls,” said Seghiri. “Riyad
had his ball - that’s why he’s unique!”
‘Mahrez effect’
Despite an unsuccessful trial in
Scotland when he was 18, Mahrez’s
patience eventually paid dividends
when he signed for fourth division
side Quimper, departing for second
division club Le Havre a year later.
Leicester, then in the Championship,
snapped up Mahrez for £400,000 in
2014, and the rest is history.—AFP
Ghana looking to
end Cup drought
ABUJA: The Black Stars of Ghana will
again be one of the favorites for the
Africa Cup of Nations as they aim to
clinch a fifth title after their last triumph 35 years ago. Ghana are one of
the most successful teams in the continent’s football showpiece having
won it in 1963, 1965, 1978 and 1982.
However, they have since fallen short,
being beaten in the championship
games for the 2010 and 2015 editions
and reaching the semi-finals in 2012
and 2013.
In 1982, oil-rich Libya paid for cashstrapped Ghana to attend the tournament with the Black Stars inspired by
youngster Abedi Pele Ayew eventually edging past their hosts in the final.
It was therefore understandable when
Ayew’s son Andre will weep uncontrollably after Ghana fell on penalties
in the championship game in
Equatorial Guinea 33 years later. The
signs are again good they will enjoy
another fine run in Gabon after they
qualified unbeaten in a group that
included Mozambique, Rwanda and
Mauritius. But at the same time, there
have been concerns over the team’s
recent form after going without a win
in their last four games towards the
end of last year so much so that their
qualification hopes for the 2018 World
Cup hang in the balance. Juventus
midfielder Kwadwo Asamoah will be
the biggest absentee for Ghana as he
has stayed back at his team to fight to
regain his first-team shirt after he was
sidelined by injury for almost a year.
However, Torino midfielder Afriyie
Acquah has backed his team to be
champions again after a long wait. “I
think we have a good team like we
had in the last tournament. We played
in the final in the previous edition but
we lost to the Ivory Coast after a
penalty shootout,” said Acquah. “We
have a tougher mentality this time
around. We are working hard to be in
the final and win the cup.”
Skipper Asamoah Gyan has continued to provide the goals and leadership for a team who have brought in
new blood with the inclusion of the
likes of Bernard Tekpety from Schalke
04 and Austria-based midfielder
Samuel Tetteh. The Black Stars are
drawn in a tough-looking Group D
along with World Cup rivals Egypt and
Uganda as well as Mali. — AFP