The inaugural edition of the Derby of the Americas comes to Doha on Wednesday evening. It’s a grand name for a stepping stone fixture whose chief reward for the winners is, effectively, a semi-final in the Intercontinental Cup against Cairo’s Al Ahly and, there, the right to meet Real Madrid in the final of Fifa’s rebrand of the old-style Club World Cup.
Some minds, among players and staff of Brazil’s Botafogo and Mexico’s Pachuca, respective champions of their continents, may already be focusing on the bigger Fifa event next summer, the expanded 32-team Club World Cup in the United States. Some individual minds may be straying beyond the Americas altogether.
It is in the nature of football’s global economy that a talented footballer playing in South or Central America is encouraged to think of success there as a stepping stone to a contract in an elite league somewhere across the Atlantic.
There are coveted stars in both teams, above all Pachuca’s Oussama Idrissi and Botafogo’s Igor Jesus, attacking footballers with unusually globetrotting pasts and with an intrepid streak.
Last year, when Idrissi, a skilful winger with an eye for goal and magic in his quick, nimble feet, joined Pachuca from Spain’s Sevilla, he broke a mould. Idrissi is a Morocco international, and for that, he was quite the novelty in the upper echelons of Mexico’s vibrant league.
By the following April, he was adored by Pachuca’s supporters, not least for his impact in the CONCACAF Champions League, where Columbus Crew, of the US, were defeated 3-0 in the final. Idrissi, drawing two defenders towards him with one of his trademark runs, cutting in from the left, slipped the ball to Salomon Rondon for the third goal. It was his sixth assist in seven games in the competition.
Nobody had done more to stamp Pachuca’s ticket to the big global showpieces that the InterContinental Cup and the 2025 Club World Cup represent.
Idrissi is 28 and was born in the Netherlands, where he played his club football until 2020, when he joined Sevilla from AZ of Alkmaar, later returning to Dutch football for spells with Ajax and Feyenoord when his career in Spain failed to take off.
His zigzag of loans – to the two Dutch giants and, in between, to Cadiz – were badly timed in that they preceded the 2022 World Cup. Morocco did not pick him in their final squad, so he missed out on the historic march of the Atlas Lions to the semi-final of the Qatar tournament. He’d be forgiven for reflecting, on this trip to Doha, that he’s in a place he ought to have got to know intimately two winters ago.
He won the last of his nine international caps 18 months ago. While Morocco head coach Walid Regragui has monitored Idrissi’s excellent impact in Mexico, where his stylish dribbling and vision is so appreciated and his match-winning statistics so impressive, the current Morocco squad have a fleet of other talented wingers, most of them playing closer to home in various leading European leagues.
Idrissi may be regularly dazzling along the left touchline in front of huge audiences in big stadiums, but he is doing so in a faraway time zone.
At least he has been for the last 18 months. That may change. There is interest in signing Idrissi from clubs in several major European leagues during next month’s transfer window. Club America, Mexico’s most decorated club, have meanwhile made no secret of their enthusiasm for poaching him from a local rival.
Pachuca have him on contract until next summer, so he’s a saleable asset now but will not be then and after a disappointing last domestic campaign, the July to December Apertura, a period of squad upheaval is anticipated.
“Unfortunately we had a difficult season,” Idrissi acknowledged to Fox Sports, “but we’ve analysed that and had a positive mini-preseason to get ready for this next challenge. We’re proud to be here in Doha and it’s a very special tournament, where any player wants to take the opportunity to show their quality.”
Up against Botafogo, who celebrated winning Brazil’s Serie A title at the weekend, and won their first Copa Libertadores – South America’s version of Champions League eight days earlier – Idrissi knows his club are deemed the underdogs. “Obviously the form you’re in coming into the game is important and we know that any South American opponent has a lot of quality and talent. But we’re ready to compete.”
Among Botafogo’s standout talents would be Igor Jesus, a player who has taken as roundabout and unlikely a route to a bid for club football’s top prize as Idrissi did. Barely five months ago, the 23-year-old was employed in the UAE, having completed the best of his four seasons up front for Shabab Al Ahli.
The Dubai club had scouted him as a teenager with a just handful of top division appearances in his native Brazil and, though his success in the UAE Pro League might easily have taken off the Brazilian radar, Botafogo kept tabs on him.
He signed for them in the summer. “I had quite a few offers,” he recalled, after sealing his domestic and continental Double on Sunday. “Botafogo convinced me and I saw here a good, united group of happy players there and they’ve given me a lot of confidence. But I didn’t imagine all this happening so quickly.”
By “all this” he means his Gulf form – 43 goals and 20 assists in his 88 games for Shabab Al Ahli – translating so quickly into the highest level of South American football.
Jesus contributed three goals and two assists in his five appearances in the Copa Libertadores knockout phase and his hard running and pressing in a side reduced to 10 men from the first minute of the final against Atletico Mineiro helped push Botago to a 3-1 win.
In October he was fast-tracked into Brazil’s national team, scoring on his debut. He’s been Brazil’s starting centre-forward in every match since.
However he performs this evening, and perhaps through two further InterContinental Cup games, he should anticipate a busy January of enquiries. Clubs in England’s Premier League, in La Liga and in Italy have taken note of the rise of Igor Jesus in the short months between his leaving Dubai and mounting the global stage in Doha.
