Petkovic Places His Trust in Riyad Mahrez to Achieve Victory

The Swiss Vladimir Petkovic, coach of the Algerian national football team, held a meeting with the Fennecs at their preparation centre, before heading to the city of Oran (western Algeria) to face the Equatorial Guinea team this Thursday evening, September 5, at the Miloud Hadefi stadium, for the AFCON 2025 qualifiers.

The Fennecs’ coach took advantage of the presence of some new names in the Algerian team’s training camp, and the return of other names after their previous absence, most notably Riyad Mahrez, a professional in Saudi Arabia, goalkeepers Alexandre Oukidja and Alexis Guendouz, Amir Sayoud, and the newcomer from the American Football League (MLS), Mohamed Farsi, where he met with his players, and was keen to motivate them and raise their morale before the start of the training camp, while highlighting his great hopes for them to present their best performance in the matches against Equatorial Guinea and Liberia, especially since he received criticism due to his choices in the recent period, but he expressed his confidence in them to achieve the goal during this training camp.

Petkovic returned to previous training camps, where he addressed the defeat against Guinea at Nelson Mandela Stadium in Baraki (Algiers), the victory in Uganda, and the matches against Guinea and Uganda in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, where the Fennecs lost the first match in Algeria by two goals to one, before winning the second match in Uganda with the same result, which made the Swiss coach reveal the mistakes that caused the failure of the Fennecs to qualify during that period, and called for avoiding the repeated mistakes in the coming period.

The Fennecs’ technical staff, led by Petkovic, expressed the need to highlight the spirit of responsibility among the players, and discipline within the group to create that spirit, in the service of the Algerian national team, stressing that it prioritizes the interest of the group over personal interest, as Petkovic said during the press conference he held at the end of last month, when he stressed in clear terms: “I am ready to let go of any player who engages in negative behaviour and affects the stability of the team.”

Nevertheless, the technical staff spoke privately with the team’s players, especially Riyad Mahrez, to whom Petkovic gave the responsibility of leading the Fennecs, expressing his confidence in his abilities and experience that will allow him to help his new teammates, and technically on the pitch, as the Al-Ahli Saudi star will take over the captain’s armband in the next two matches, after Yacine Brahimi’s absence from the training camp, who was the team’s captain in the previous two training camps.