Jaouad Zairi

Jaouad Zaïri ( Arabic جواد الزايري, DMG Ǧawād az-Zāyirī ; Born April 14, 1982 in Douar Jjalla , Morocco ) is a Moroccan football player .

Career

The offensive all-rounder began his career as a professional footballer at the French second division club FC Gueugnon when he was 18 . Jaouad Zaïri got attention in Ligue 1 and was able to leave his club FC Gueugnon after a year, after the 2000/01 season, in favor of the French first division club FC Sochaux . At FC Sochaux he became a regular player, not least because of his fascinating ball technique in the form of dribbling, which his coaches were not always as enthusiastic about as the spectators.

In 2004 Zaïri made it into the Moroccan national team , along with the other two stars Marouane Chamakh and Youssouf Hadji . These wild Atlas Lions were almost unbeatable because they won almost every game from the preliminary round to the semifinals and with only two goals against. Only in the final were two more added.

Zaïri became the shooting star and darling of the country during the African Cup of Nations. Morocco made it to the final with the new young generation, where they were narrowly defeated by hosts Tunisia (2: 1).

In the 2005 World Cup qualifying group match against Kenya, Zaïri managed a hat trick. However, Morocco could not qualify for the World Cup in Germany, as Tunisia drew thanks to a Moroccan own goal in the last and decisive game of Group 5 (2: 2). Thus Tunisia was at the top of the table with one point ahead of Morocco. Here it became clear that this team had not quite reached the level of the generation from the 1998 World Cup. In the 2005/06 season Jaouad Zairi played for the Saudi first division club Al-Ittihad Jeddah . He then played for Boavista Porto in the 2006/07 season . Then he moved on loan to the French club FC Nantes , who did not take up the purchase option after six months. He then played until the end of 2011 in Greece, where he won the Greek championship with Olympiacos Piraeus in 2011 , half a year for Anorthosis Famagusta in Cyprus and Oman. After a period without a contract and some trial training at professional clubs, which - like Real Valladolid  - did not lead to a commitment, he joined the French fourth division Monts d'Or Chasselay Azergues at the beginning of 2014 , where he worked with other aged ex-internationals such as Ludovic Giuly and Sidney Govou are in a team.

literature

• Article "Zaïri - contre-pied à Chasselay" in France Football of March 25, 2014, p. 36

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ see Zaïris data sheet at footballdatabase.eu