Less than a minute into Algeria’s final World Cup qualifier against Uganda, Riyad Mahrez was performing a favourite trick. Pitter-patter steps, a light drop of the shoulder and the quick dart inside his opponent on to his preferred left foot.
Naturally, the Ugandans were wise to it. Two defensive reinforcements swiftly closed in: Mahrez was one man against three. But he has always been a Houdini in tight spaces and so, with a feathery roll of his left sole over the ball, he gained a yard and slipped a short pass to Hicham Boudaoui.
Boudaoui, alas, does not cross the ball as skilfully as Mahrez can. Still, the moment had an ample crowd at the Hocine Ait Ahmed Stadium rising off their seats. They had come ready to cheer, Algeria having booked their place at next summer’s World Cup five days earlier, Mahrez scoring once and setting up two goals in a 3-0 victory over Somalia. “He answered the people who criticise him with a great performance,” said manager Vladimir Petkovic.
Those critics are not small in number, as Petkovic has learnt over the 19 months since he assumed charge of a squad in which the collective memory swings from one great high - the Mahrez-inspired triumph at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations - to some gloomy low points, like successive group-stage eliminations at two Afcons since.
Mahrez has been the frequent vessel of a public desire for radical renewal while Petkovic is perceived, in some quarters, as stubbornly loyal to the older guard.
“The national team shouldn’t be a souvenir museum,” roared the prominent commentator Hafid Derradji when, in September, Algeria’s progress through a straightforward qualifying group briefly hit a bump.
Mahrez has heard worse, especially in the period since he left Manchester City, fresh from gaining a Uefa Champions League title, to join Al Ahli in Jeddah.
He’s been criticised for appearing less lean than he used to, for showing fewer of those zippy changes of gear that characterise his best dribbles. “He knows all about pressures,” noted Petkovic.
The easy counter to the critics is to cite numbers. Mahrez may be 34 years old, he may have dropped a level going from the English Premier League to the Saudi Pro League, where he has spent the past two years, but the statistics speak only of an enduringly decisive player: 31 goals and 40 assists in 88 matches for Al Ahli, who, thanks in large part to Mahrez, are Asia’s current club champions.
Whether Mahrez can again be an African champion at what will be his sixth Afcon starting at the end of this year in Morocco, is moot. But Algeria should have strong support there, and the possibility of new heroes to back.
Petkovic may have been derided for, as one Algerian report took it “choosing the path of non-transition”, yet he is identifying footballers for a post-Mahrez time.
Specifically, that time tends to be the last half-hour of matches. The Algeria captain is usually deemed to be tiring at around the midpoint of second halves, ready to be replaced.
Anis Hadj-Moussa, the 23-year-old Feyenoord winger, came on for Mahrez against Uganda, helping turn a 1-0 deficit into an eventual 2-1 home win, and the increasingly influential Mohamed Amoura was the key man in the turnaround that evening, also signposting the coach’s forward thinking.
Hadj-Moussa is a relative newcomer, having won his first cap under Petkovic last March. Ibrahim Maza made his first competitive start against Uganda, playing just behind the spearhead striker. And, to popular acclaim, there was finally an international debut, for the last few minutes, for Ilan Kebbal, of Paris FC.
All three of those footballers cite Mahrez as a hero, and if Feyenoord’s Hadj-Moussa, more direct in style, and Bayer Leverkusen’s Maza, more playmaker than winger, are not exactly in the Mahrez mould, they can look at the player's legend and imagine that the pitter-patter footsteps that led to his first World Cup has some resonance for them.
Rewind back to 2014, when Algeria last reached a World Cup finals, and Mahrez was an outsider in the squad.
He was 24, but had never played in a top division, his late-flowering career having stretched only from Le Havre in France to Leicester City, who had just won promotion to the English Premier League. The rest is history.
Mahrez would go on to play a lead part in the improbable feat of Leicester winning the English title, and to 106 caps – and counting – for his country.
Echoes there for Maza, who, identified as a prodigy in his mid-teens, had only played two top-division matches in Germany prior to his summer move from Hertha Berlin to Leverkusen.
And for Kebbal, much more the late-flourisher, who had spent all but one season of his nine as a professional outside the upper tier of the club pyramid in France before he inspired Paris FC’s promotion to Ligue 1 last May.
He is 27 now and thriving in the French elite. Paris FC are in the top half of the table, and if they are obliged to live in the shadow of their very near neighbours Paris Saint-Germain, Kebbal more than anybody is establishing their distinct identity. “We’re learning about the demands of the highest level and holding our own,” he said.
More than that in his case. Kebbal has four goals in his seven Ligue 1 matches this season, including a wonderful strike, from distance, having cut in from the right flank on to his left foot at a hostile Olympique Marseille.
It was the sort of goal Mahrez would have been delighted to own and which certainly made an impression on Petkovic, watching from afar.
Kebbal was called up for Algeria days later, to then make his longed-for international bow on Tuesday, with a World Cup clearly on the horizon. “I’m aware there’s a lot of competition for places in my role, with Hadj-Moussa and the legend Riyad Mahrez, but I’ll push for my opportunities,” Kebbal says. “And as long as I’m doing well in Paris, who knows?”
