No wonder Morocco and France both desperately wanted Bouaddi to play for them.<\/p>\n
Giroud, a World Cup winner, was in his ear, “teasing him the whole year regarding picking France”.<\/p>\n
Yet Bouaddi opted against it.<\/p>\n
Bouaddi may have represented Les Bleus throughout the youth age groups, but he has always been immensely proud of his family’s roots.<\/p>\n
Explaining his ultimate decision to declare for Morocco, rather than the country of his birth, Bouaddi uploaded an old photograph on Instagram.<\/p>\n
It captured the then ten-year-old in a Morocco shirt as he watched on from the stands at the 2018 World Cup.<\/p>\n
“I am aware of the privilege I have to defend these colours and I will give everything to best represent my country,” he vowed.<\/p>\n
Bouaddi certainly backed up those words in the New York New Jersey Stadium.<\/p>\n
Such was his influence, no other Moroccan player had more touches than Bouaddi (87) or completed more passes (60) in the 1-1 draw against Brazil.<\/p>\n
As others wilted in the heat, Bouaddi repeatedly dribbled past yellow shirts and took Morocco up the pitch, even in the final minutes.<\/p>\n
Bouaddi did not shy away from the gritty side of the game, either, winning nine duels, as Brazil veteran Casemiro discovered after being unceremoniously left in a heap at one point.<\/p>\n
Casemiro was tellingly substituted at half-time following what Morocco captain Achraf Hakimi called a “masterclass” of a performance from Bouaddi.<\/p>\n
However, again, to those who know Bouaddi best, such as former Creil coach Armand Doue, it was nothing out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n
“He does this kind of match every weekend on the pitches of Ligue 1,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No wonder Morocco and France both desperately wanted Bouaddi to play for them. Giroud, a World Cup winner,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-747100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}