The Spanish-Moroccan player has played 25 minutes in this World Cup
Despite renouncing the Africa Cup, he finally chose to play for his country of birth
Going to the World Cup in Qatar was already a prize for Ez Abde, the young Barça winger who is playing on loan at Osasuna this season. Precisely his good performances in the Navarrese team, demonstrating in the minutes that he has played his ability to balance and assist his teammates, led him to be called up by the Morocco coach, Hoalid Regragui, for the World Cup. The coach bet on him despite having only been capped twice, making his debut on September 23 in a friendly that Morocco played in Barcelona against Chile.
And fate, or rather, the good performance of Morocco finishing first in their group and the surprise of Spain finishing second, have caused Abde to run into his former teammates at Barça as rivals in the round of 16 tie. The winger shared a dressing room with all of them last season in the Barça team. In this World Championship, for the moment, Abde has only played 25 minutes in the three games because in the Moroccan forward he has good competition with Ziyech or En-Nesyri, for example.
Withdrew from the African Cup
Abde is playing with Morocco despite the fact that he could also have done it with Spain. He waited for that call but it didn’t end up coming. He has dual nationality having grown up in Spain during his childhood and the Spanish federation asked him to be patient when choosing whether Luis Enrique with the absolute or Luis de la Fuente, with the sub-21 they had him in some announcement. It was during the months when his performances with Xavi’s first team amazed many. The Barça coach gave him many opportunities because his profile fit him like a glove. Overflow by band and ability to open the field.
In Morocco they have already forgiven him for giving up playing in the last African Cup, which was played between January 9 and February 6. At that time, Abde was having a lot of minutes with the Barça first team and he wanted to take advantage of the moment. The situation at the Barça club was one of many injuries up front (Memphis, Ansu…) and in January the team had many commitments such as the return to the League, the Copa del Rey and the Spanish Super Cup.
In addition, he still harbored hopes of being called up by Spain, as he stated in his letter of resignation to play the tournament with Morocco. But time went by, Xavi stopped counting on him so much and that made the Spanish teams also stop following him closely. And Morocco reappeared. And on that occasion Abde said yes.