Nine new professional players will join Algeria

Nine new young professional players’ names are mentionned in Algeria coach Lucas Alcaraz’s diary ahead of their integration in the national team for the next matches. This comes as part of changes planned by Alcaraz by excluding some players, according to the president of the Algerian Football Federation Khireddine Zatchi.

Echorouk has learnt that Alcaraz established a list of 9 young players who play for European professional clubs. They would join the Algerian national team starting from October 7th. Algeria is expected to face Cameroon in Yaoundé on that date in the fifth round of World Cup Russia.

The nine players are: Girona FC’s Farid Boulaya (24 years old), AS Saint-Étienne’s Rayan Souici (18 years old), PSG’s Yacine Adli (17 years old), Olympique Lyonnais’ Amine Gouiri and Houssem Aouar (17 and 19 years old respectively), Hellas Verona’s Mohamed Fares (21 years old), Brugge’s Ahmed Touba (19 years old), Inter Milan’s Mohamed Belkheir (18 years old), Liverpool’s Yasser Laroussi (17 years old),  Empoli’s Ismail Bennacer (20 years old) and Napoli’s Adam Ounas (21 years old).

According to the same sources, The players accepted to join the national team. Lucaraz plans to integrate them progressively to check their level and capacity.

Earlier on Monday, the Algerian Football Federation said new players would be called in for the match against Cameroon and the exclusion of some players would be “circumstantial and temporary.”

“The national team’s technical staff held a meeting with Lucas Alcaraz to examine the future of the team following Algeria’s exclusion from World Cup Russia 2018. After a debate and due to the small number of scheduled friendly matches, some players will be called in for the match against Cameroon to check their talents,” said the Federation in a release.

“This absolutely does not mean that the players who will not take part in the match are definitively excluded,” it added.

 This comes as news reports said Alcaraz and Zatchi would exclude some well-known players from the match against Cameroon including Ryad Mahrez, Islam Slimani, Safir Taider, Nabil Bentaleb, adlene Guedioura and carl Medjani.

The Federation tries to avoid any crisis or negative reaction from the excluded players, fans or observers.

A large controversy was raised shortly after a match against Zambia as Zatchi said 4 or 5 professional would be excluded.