The year in which Wolverhampton Wanderers last appeared in the Premier League – 2012 – was also the year in which the player who is now the linchpin of their midfield, Romain Saïss, played his first professional match. He was nearly 22.

Now his career is on course to reach new heights. Victory at Sheffield Wednesday on Friday would give Wolves a seven-point lead at the top of the Championship and boost their chances of returning to the Premier League. Promotion would be the perfect ending to Saïss’s club campaign before he goes with Morocco to the World Cup, where he could face the player on whom he has modelled his game, Spain’s Sergio Busquets.

“He’s always been an inspiration for me,” says Saïss, whose country have been grouped with Spain, Portugal and Iran. “Busquets is very important to his team even though you don’t always notice him because of the extraordinary things done by [Lionel] Messi, [Luis] Suárez and [Andrés] Iniesta. But I’ve always enjoyed watching him: his positioning, the simplicity of his play. I really hope I play against him at the World Cup. Trying to emulate him has helped me take all the steps I had to get through to be here now.”

There have been many steps and setbacks on that journey, including falling out of favour last season with Wolves’ then-manager, Paul Lambert, and having to endure a four-year gap between his first international cap and his second. It has been a feat to even get far enough to encounter such problems, as many other aspiring players would have abandoned their dreams after reaching their 20s without arousing the interest of a professional club.

Saïss, born to a Moroccan father and French mother in the Drôme region of south-east France, says he never lost hope even if he did a course in business studies while playing with an amateur club, AS Valence, in France’s fifth tier. “I always stayed focused even though when you reach 21 and are still an amateur you know it’s getting less likely that it will happen for you,” he says. “But I knew there were other players who had broken through late, such as Franck Ribéry who, like me, never even went to an academy. So I just kept working.”

His breakthrough came when he was spotted by the second-tier side Clermont Foot. In January 2012, six months after signing for Clermont and two months before his 22nd birthday, he made his professional debut. He did so well at Clermont that he earned a move to Le Havre, where he played in midfield alongside Riyad Mahrez.

After Mahrez moved to Leicester, Saïss joined Angers in France’s top flight, where his performances convinced Wolves to pay around £3m to bring him to England. That was in August 2016, a few months after Mahrez had been named Premier League player of the year. “When you see one of your friends do so well, it strengthens your desire and belief that you can get to the top level, too,” says Saïss. “Riyad always had superb technical qualities but he wouldn’t have achieved what he has done without working. I still speak with him often and I know he did everything he had to do to reach the top. It would be brilliant to meet him in the Premier League.”

Romain Saïss in the thick of a West Midlands derby against Birmingham earlier this month. Photograph: Tony O'Brien/Action Images

Saïss, jovial by nature, is happier at Wolves now than he was last season, when he lost his place after going to the Africa Cup of Nations with Morocco. He had heard of players being punished for departing on international duty in the middle of the season and found it curious that Lambert did not restore him to the starting lineup until a month after his return in February.

“The team was in difficulty towards the bottom of the table, winning matches in the FA Cup but not in the league, but I wasn’t being picked; I’ll leave it to you to work out why,” he says, suggesting he has a theory. “I didn’t want to create trouble so just carried on working but at the end of the season it was important for me to ask the manager why he had left me out of the team for, strangely enough, basically the same amount of time that I had been away on international duty. I knew the truth but wanted to hear it from him. But he couldn’t tell me, he hid behind other excuses, which was a pity. But that’s life and I just got on with it.”

Lambert was replaced by Nuno Espírito Santo in May after Wolves finished 15th. Saïss says the Portuguese’s approach has been integral to the club’s rise to the top of the Championship and the upswing in his own fortunes.

“We have a new way of playing and you can see that some players who had difficulties are able to express themselves better than last season,” says Saïss. “The relationship between manager and players is very important and [Santo] is very close to us. And his style of play is ideal. When he came he told us his plan and started putting it in place from his first training session. I realised straight away I was going to enjoy playing in his system and with his style. I like running but not just for the sake of it. I like to have the ball and play. That’s how it is now.”

The World Cup draw is ideal: Spain, Portugal and Iran are exactly the sort of challenges that Morocco enjoys

He enjoys a similar relationship with Morocco’s manager, Hervé Renard. The charismatic Frenchman took charge in February 2016 and gave Saïss his first cap since 2012. “I think I needed to gain more maturity to become a regular at international level,” he says. He has also had to show his versatility: for his country he plays in central defence alongside Juventus’s Medhi Benatia. “Originally I was supposed to play in midfield but when Medhi got sick before a match the manager asked me if I’d be able to switch to defence. I’ve been there ever since, now alongside Medhi. I learn a lot playing with him, which is only natural because he has played for great clubs in the Champions League. And we’re close off the pitch too, so if he gives me a rollicking I know it’s not personal, he just wants to help me and the team.” So how good are Morocco now?

“I guess we’re going to find out,” says Saïss. “We are better than we were and that is partly down to the manager. Our qualification owes much to him. He changed our mentality. He is very attached to the players, as we are to him, but the first thing he did was confront us with our responsibilities. He said Morocco has gone through a lot of managers without being able to produce a team as strong as the sum of its parts, so it was above all up to us to do something about that. Now we are really tight, there’s real solidarity. And I think the World Cup draw is ideal: getting pitted against Spain, Portugal and Iran are exactly the sort of challenges that Morocco enjoys. Playing against the best is how you find out how good you really are.”