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Leicester deny player-power: Mahrez saga

By Thomas Bradley Alderman

LEICESTER, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: Riyad Mahrez of Leicester City celebrates scoring his side's second goal during the Premier League match between Leicester City and Watford at The King Power Stadium on January 20, 2018 in Leicester, England. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
LEICESTER, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: Riyad Mahrez of Leicester City celebrates scoring his side's second goal during the Premier League match between Leicester City and Watford at The King Power Stadium on January 20, 2018 in Leicester, England. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images) /
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LEICESTER, ENGLAND – APRIL 17: Riyad Mahrez, Christian Fuchs and Leonardo Ulloa of Leicester City manager during a training session at their Belvoir drive traning centre prior to the Champins League match on April 17, 2017 in Leicester, United Kingdom. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
LEICESTER, ENGLAND – APRIL 17: Riyad Mahrez, Christian Fuchs and Leonardo Ulloa of Leicester City manager during a training session at their Belvoir drive traning centre prior to the Champins League match on April 17, 2017 in Leicester, United Kingdom. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images) /

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A year before current issues, Mahrez’s teammate Leonardo Ulloa also went on strike. Well, he threatened too and was immediately talked into a u-turn before ironically leaving on loan this ‘window’. We move now to summer 2017, before the beginning of the current season. Shakespeare’s side began the campaign with Mahrez on-board.

Suddenly, in a bizarre manoeuvre, the winger gained dubious permission from Algerian Football Federation while on international duty – to wait at Paris Airport.

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While his teammates prepared to travel to Zambia, he would have been too far from Europe for potential transfer talks. Regardless of all this, there had been no bid since Roma’s of £32 million in June. Allegedly his agent advised him to do this.

The 26-year-old soon returned to action with Leicester stating his commitment. Although the representative was promptly sacked when no bid came in and replaced by super-agent Kia Joorabchian. Joorabchian is reportedly the man who attempted to engineer Mahrez’s failed move to Man City this January.

Comedies of errors like these earn you nicknames with squads which include players such as Jamie Vardy. ‘Viktor Navorski’, from the film The Terminal is Mahrez’s new moniker. The pain caused there is nothing compared to his apparent contribution – or lack of – to Algeria’s World Cup nightmare.

The North Africans dropped Riyad Mahrez their World Cup qualifier against Cameroon. It didn’t really matter that he was out of the squad because the fixture was academic, it was a symbolic message. Algeria would not be travelling to Russia 2018. During the Paris Airport debacle in summer 2017 he missed the game against Zambia and the Greens failed to qualify for the World Cup.

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