Manchester United’s Noussair Mazraoui was victorious with Morocco last night as they cruised to a 5-1 win away to Gabon in qualification for the African Cup of Nations.
The World Cup semi-finalists had slightly less possession with 48% of the ball but had 15 shots to their opponents’ 11.
Mazraoui has had a very impressive start to the season, adapting very well to the rigours of Premier League football since his arrival from Bayern Munich in the summer.
His performances have been even more impressive as he has often had to play out of position as a left back, frequently swapping roles with Diogo Dalot, as they are the club’s only fit senior full backs at the moment.
In this match, Mazraoui played the entire 90 minutes and completed two tackles, starting at the left back position.
Soafscore gave him a score of 6.9 for his evening’s work.
Mazraoui has already shown in his limited United career that he is always up for the fight and he brought that intensity, winning four out of his seven ground duels during the match.
He also demonstrated his impressive abilities on the ball as he had 46 touches and completed 29 out of his 31 passes for a pass completion percentage of 91%.
He also completed one key pass and showed off his range by finding his intended target in four of his five long ball attempts.
The 27 year old also forayed forward from time to time, completing one of his two dribble attempts.
The Moroccan has been a bargain so far at only £12.8m and United fans will be intrigued to see how he can adapt to Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-3 system which plays with wing backs rather than traditional fullbacks.
The win means The Atlas Lions have won all five of their qualifying matches and sit eight points ahead of Gabon, having qualified comfortably a long time ago.
They will wrap up the qualification process at home to Lesotho on Monday evening.
Alex Browne
Alex is a huge Manchester United fan, inspired by greats of his homeland such as George Best, Harry Gregg and Norman Whiteside. Proud owner of such niche shirts such as Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Gary Neville. Grew up pretending to be Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the back garden, with little success.
