Petkovic Needs to Look For a Young Goalkeeper
The Fennecs’ matches against Bolivia and South Africa show that the new coach is about to open many workshops, very quickly, because the dates for June and the matches against Guinea and Uganda are close.
Among the urgent workshops is the position of goalkeeper. Frankly, Anthony Mandria is the best of the bad. Still, he does not reassure his teammates and the football fans, as Rais M’Bolhi used to do, who spent more than 13 years with the Algerian team. The general public hardly mentions a single lapse during the matches and mentions his legendary saves against the best players in the world and the best teams, including England in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Germany in the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, and Senegal in AFCON 2009.
If the problem of local goalkeepers is instability, as they can play a legendary match and not concede goals from favourable positions, but in the next match they commit naive mistakes like Chaouchi, Zemamouche, Asla, Zeghba and the others, then Petkovic must look for a young goalkeeper in Europe who can build a future with him, because Mandria is currently performing at regular and intermediate levels, and he plays for an average team in the French second division and does not have any offer from stronger teams than the SM Caen club for which he plays.
In Europe, it appears that the Algerian community prefers to push its sons into attacking positions before defending, and there are only a few of them in goalkeeper positions, and at modest levels. For example, goalkeeper Teddy Boulhendi, who plays for the French club OGC Nice, has never been involved in the last two seasons, even for a single minute, and the better this goalkeeper hopes for is to sit on the reserve bench, noting that Boulhendi, who is nearly 23, is the goalkeeper of the Algerian Olympic team.
The goalkeeper Sami Tlemcani, who was said to aspire to guard Chelsea’s goal and expressed his adherence to the Algerian colours, no news has appeared about him, and it turns out that he is a mid-level goalkeeper who cannot help the Fennecs, but in the cases of Tlemcani and Boulhendi, they did not receive an invitation from the Algerian team.
The last goalkeeper to offer himself to the new coach, Vladimir Petkovic, is Leonard Aggoune, the goalkeeper of the French club FC Rouen, which plays in the third division, and he is not even a starting goalkeeper, but in the match of the Rouen club in the French cup, and its qualification at the expense of Monaco, he was the hero of the confrontation by saving the penalties, and after qualifying he said that he dreams of wearing the Algerian national team’s jersey, and he said literally: “I think that what I did with Rouen in the French Cup revealed to everyone that I have the capabilities to play at a high level, and I hope that this will be enough to attract the attention of the Algerian national team’s coach.” Aggoune emerged from the Paris Saint-Germain school where he played in the youth groups for 8 years, before looking for another club, he is convinced that the Fennecs can provide him with the opportunity to realize amazing performance.
Vladimir Petkovic played with three goalkeepers and got to know them, and all the coaches who passed through the Fennecs team, led by Djamel Belmadi, know that replacing the phenomenon of M’Bolhi in all technical and moral aspects is difficult to achieve. However, Petkovic is forced to find a high-class goalkeeper because we cannot dream of a great team without a great goalkeeper.
