Barcelona star Lamine Yamal has been told he made a mistake choosing to play his international football for Spain rather than Morocco.
The teenager is eligible to play for both nations but went with La Roja and has already won a European Championship title with the team.
Yet Morocco legend Mustapha Hadji says that it’s a shame Yamal went for Spain instead of Morocco and feels he would have felt more love from supporters of the Atlas Lions.
“Even if he plays for Spain, the affection the Spanish will have for him will never be the same as that of the Moroccans,” he said, via AS.
“So it’s a shame he didn’t choose Morocco, because if he had, things would have been different. It’s sad because, as I recently read in a Spanish newspaper, some journalists were saying: ‘We have Pedri, we love Pedri, we love Yamal, but we don’t love him as much as Pedri.’ So that means he made a mistake. I would have liked him to play for Morocco. He will always be Moroccan, even if he plays for Spain.”
Yamal spoke recently about his decision in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes. He said that he “had always wanted to play a European Championship” – something he could not do with Morocco and added that “Spain was playing the Euros, I grew up here, and I feel this is my country.”
