Tawfiq bin Mohammed
Behind the glittering image of Manchester City player Riyad Mahrez, tears, hiccups and social problems disappear, which began with the separation of his parents and then the loss of his greatest supporter, his father, and continued with his rejection in several teams because of his thinness.
The Algerian national team champion - 2019 African champion - dug with his fingernails to write his name as one of the most prominent players in the world, and he was the one who left the forgotten Parisian suburbs and turned the obstacles that blocked his path into steps backward that preceded giant leaps towards the summit.
Mehrez's march under the lights of fame preceded these scenes in the shade, which many did not see.
His father is a former player and the heart problem led him to emigrate
Ahmed Mehrez, the father of Riyadh, was a football player in the youth team of Bani Senus, the small team that represents a town located on the Algerian-Moroccan border. Doctors told him that he had a heart problem and needed surgery to fix the pacemaker, which is why he stopped his career, He invited him to emigrate to France, where he performed the surgery there.
Ahmed was the first supporter of Riyadh, and behind his inclusion of the first team "Ace Sarsel", he died in 2006 while the boy was fifteen years old.
The son of marginalized Parisian suburbs
Mahrez is one of the eight players who crowned the 2019 African Cup with Algeria born in the Parisian suburbs. He saw the light in 1991 in "Sarsel", the area north of Paris, which was built in the fifties of the last century and the establishment of two decades to accommodate immigrants of different nationalities and ethnicities.
Riad witnessed the uprising of the sons of the Parisian suburbs that erupted in 2005 after the killing of two young people and caused the imposition of the state of emergency, events that drew attention to the situation of the residents of these marginalized areas whose inhabitants are overwhelmed by unemployment, marginalization and blockage of horizons, which established their feeling that they are citizens less important than others.
His mother is a cleaner
Mahrez's mother, a cleaning worker, worked in a private clinic to provide for the needs of her three children, after she divorced her husband when Riad was eight years old.
Halima stopped working and Sarsel left after he bought her a large house, and in an interview with the French newspaper L'Equipe in May 2016, Mahrez said, “Halima my mother has stopped cleaning, I am happy for her, and it is my honor to dedicate her to this luxury. I will not give her everything she gave me. "
He borrowed the price of the train ticket and his tears saved the situation
Riyadh Mahrez's mother attends twice in his beginning story, as he needed to buy a ticket to travel to the far northwest of France to conduct a series of experiments in the club "Kimbar", which was 2009 in the fourth division, so he asked her 160 euros (about $ 173) to buy a ticket The train, promising it to return it. When he got there, and after testing him, they told him that they did not have the money to sign a contract for him.
"The French burst into tears while talking to his mother over the phone. The club president saw the situation and signed a contract for him after 24 hours," French journalist Christophe Marchand speaks to BBC.
They refused him in Spain and Romania and fled from Scotland
Riyad Mahrez, who presents as a player to learn ball on the streets, was rejected by two teams from Romania and Spain after a series of experiments, and in Scotland he spent a two-month probation period at "Saint Mirren" club with a category less than 23 years, due to the cold weather and language barrier as well as the length of waiting Without an answer, he pretended that he forgot his shoes on the exercise ground, and from the hotel he rode a bicycle, walking to the train station and from there to the airport where he boarded the plane back to France.
The first official match with "Greens" was in the World Cup
Few of the world players who played the first official match in their World Cup career, and one of them, if he had appeared before her for the first time against Armenia in a friendly match, and on June 17, 2014 at the Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte, he entered essentially in the first game For Algeria in the group stage against Belgium, the match lost by the team that was coached by Vahid Haliluzic 2-1.
He never played for France, and this is his relationship with Morocco
Unlike many of the stars of the Algerian national team, Sofiane Feghouli, Yassine Brahimi and Wahhab Rais Meboulahi, Riad Mehrez did not carry the colors of France in any age group, and he chose to represent Algeria directly while he had just begun to admire a few months after joining the English Leicester.
Some believe that Mahrez’s mother is Moroccan and that he was able to represent the Atlas Lions, however she is Algerian, of a Moroccan mother and a father descended from Bashar in southern Algeria.
He became captain of the Algerian national team in Qatar
Mehrez became the captain of the Algerian national team in the preparatory camp held by the Algerian national team in Qatar last summer before the African Nations Cup, and the Algerian coach, Jamel Belmadi, was hesitant between him and three other players before he was separated in his favor.
His special status and his relationship with his colleagues had a role in making him the leader, at that time he had carried the shirt of the Algerian national team 44 times, while goalkeeper Maboulahi had played 14 games more than him.
One of the thinnest English Premier League players
Riyad Mahrez, who made the glory of the English Leicester team, admits that he did not know this team before traveling to him to inspect his facilities in anticipation of joining him, but he believed that he was a club for "rugby".
His physical form attracted a fitness officer for the Wolves team, Matte Reeves, and he devoted an intense weightlifting program to gain weight.
Nevertheless, Riad Mehrez, who weighs 61 kg, remains one of the thinnest players in the Premier League.
His salary has increased 875 times
The first salary for Riyadh Mahrez was seven hundred euros ($ 759), an amount that was considered for him ten years ago and he who reached "Kimbar" and has no other than his shoes, while today he enjoys in his team Manchester City with a weekly salary estimated at 143 thousand euros (more than 155 thousand dollars), that is, he is paid 875 times more than his first salary.