After helping Leicester to an unexpected English title, Riyad Mahrez is expected to lead the Algerian renaissance at the Nations Cup, as Maher Mezahi, our man in Algiers, explains.

After playing a key role in Leicester City’s fairy tale run to the English Premier League title last season, becoming the first African to be named the PFA “Player of the Year” – an accolade even the great Didier Drogba never won, in all his years with Chelsea – Riyad Mahrez spent last summer in El Khemis, his father’s village in Western Algeria.

The drive into El Khemis is a particular one – a single serpentine road stretches up and around the cosmopolitan city of Tlemcen, running through sprawling hills and into an isolated valley. Called the “Miracle Country”, the proud, little piece of land earned its moniker by resisting centuries of cultural and military invasion. Mahrez may have been born and raised in Sarcelles, a rundown Parisian suburb but the residents of El Khemis fiercely claim the striker as their own.

“When he visited during Ramadan, he slept on the floor of his grandmother’s house!” a taxi driver chuckled, before adding, “He must have taken a thousand photos.”

Mahrez does not agree with that. “I must have taken three or four thousand photos in less than six days,” he recalls. “I couldn’t go out. I hid and stayed at home. I couldn’t deal with all the people. I know they love me, and I love them too… but I could not speak with the whole village.” Despite his amazing success, football has not changed the lithe winger. That is what makes Mahrez so likeable – he does not seem to understand just how big a deal he has become.

“You should see him with the national team,” said Amir Karaoui, his Algeria teammate. “He sits slouched with his hood over his ears and eats Nutella with a spoon.”

“He eats nothing at dinner,” says goalkeeper Raïs M’Bolhi. “In the evening he will just put some Parmesan on bread. Then he heads back to his room and the entire night, he’ll eat chocolate.”

Ian Stringer, a BBC Radio Leicester journalist, has a similar tale, after Mahrez “crucified” Chelsea at the King Power Stadium in December 2015.

“Just after the match, he was spotted in a local restaurant, eating fries and mayonnaise. Pressure?What…”

Other tales from El Khemis have the Leicester winger presenting congratulatory plaques for Quranic competitions at their thousand-year-old mosque and playing football with the youth, on an artificial pitch tucked into the mountains.

With his face plastered across advertising boards across Algeria, Mahrez is the only Algerian to feature as a Ballon d’Or candidate, besides being the most accomplished striker from the Arab world to feature in English football. His worry-free attitude extends to his playing style – a nimble touch and body feints are traits of the game he learned on the streets. Staying true to that informs his brilliance on the pitch.

“I played in Sarcelles during my childhood. We would play behind apartment complexes. I wouldn’t say our parents weren’t strict, but they would let us play and enjoy ourselves. When you play every day, that improves your technique and your dribbling. That’s why I think technical players come from the street.”

Mahrez would join hometown club AAS Sarcelles as an adolescent, but Mohamed Coulibaly, his youth coach, testifies that Mahrez did struggle to export his game from the streets to the pitch. “At first, his technique bailed him out. But when he started playing eleven-a-side it was more complicated for him, because he was a smaller kid between the ages of twelve and sixteen.”

Kids playing football in Mahrez’s home village of El Khemis

There artificial pitch where Mahrez would play with family and friends in the summer

El Khemis seen from above

A photo of Riyad’s father with his local team in Algeria







At 15, Mahrez’s life changed forever. His father, Ahmed, finally succumbed to a heart condition that had been plaguing him for decades.Djilali, Ahmed’s best friend, recounted how the young pair escaped Algeria in the early 1970s after it was determined Mahrez the elder urgently needed a pacemaker.

The operation was not possible in Algeria, so one day Djilali set out to convince Ahmed to illegally immigrate to France, where Riyad was subsequently born.

“I told him, ‘My friend, if you want to live, get a passport, we’ll escape to France, while I figure it out.’

“We took the route that cuts through Oujda [in Morocco] and then, we went to Tangier.

“Overnight I thought he had died. I tried waking him and couldn’t until I threw water in his face. He was in a poor state until we reached Paris.”

Ahmed, who had played amateur football in Algeria for NRB Beni Snous, opted to stay in Paris and got married, as his health improved.

But he never forgot his friend Djilali and continued to visit El Khemis every year, until his death in 2006. Ahmed’s death was particularly tough on Riyad, as he was not only a personal role model, but he also played an important role in helping him grow as a footballer.

“My dad was always behind me. He played for small teams in France and Algeria so he knew what he was saying. I don’t know if I started to be more serious but after his death, things started to happen for me. Maybe in my head I wanted it more.” In addition to the loss of emotional support, very few coaches, at the early stages of his career, believed that Mahrez’s skill could compensate for the lack of an imposing physique. “They used to say, ‘He’s too skinny, he’s not strong enough in the tackle. He’s too frail, too light.’ I heard this often.” Mahrez’s first real break came when he left his local club and joined Quimper in the French Fourth Division. He only scored two goals in his first full season with the lower league club, but his swagger caught the eye of several professional clubs. First there was an unsuccessful trial at St. Mirren in Scotland, with the club dithering on whether to award him a contract.