FC St. Pauli

"Being a late call-up I didn't think I'd play that much," said Bouhaddouz. Coach Hervé Renard had other ideas, though, and named the Berkane-born striker in his starting lineup for every game. Bouhaddouz played for exactly 300 minutes and scored an important equaliser in the 3-1 group stage win over Togo. Morocco progressed to the quarter-final, where despite a good performance and lots of chances they succumbed to the only goal of the game in the 88^th minute against eventual finalists Egypt.

"It was actually our best performance of the tournament," he said. "I was gutted for a few days, of course, but now I'm fully focused on the relegation battle with St. Pauli." Bouhaddouz gained a wealth of experience during the four weeks in Africa, where he came up against international stars such as Serge Aurier (Paris Saint-Germain), Eric Bailly (Manchester United) and Mohamed Salah (AS Roma).

Ranked among the outsiders in view of the strong competition, Morocco reached the last eight for the first time in 13 years, making it a successful tournament overall for Bouhaddouz. "The whole country was behind us and my friends and family watched all the games," he said. "The king of Morocco would have travelled to Gabon if we'd made it through to the semi-final."

That wasn't to be and now the two-footed striker faces 15 second-division finals with the Boys in Brown. Bouhaddouz watched the Stuttgart game via FaceTime and was impressed by the performance of his teammates, who eventually got their reward a week later at Braunschweig. "We have great individual quality in our ranks," he said. "I'm absolutely convinced we can avoid the drop together." Bouhaddouz is now back with the team and desperate to return to action in a brown-and-white shirt. Whether that will be this Sunday against Dynamo Dresden (1330 CET) will be down to the coaching team, however.

Photo: Witters