Amine Adli: 'Big brother Walid Regragui makes us want to die for the Moroccan people’

Young Bayer Leverkusen forward is grateful to have Xabi Alonso overseeing his development at club level, as well as ‘super guy’ Regragui for his national team

Morocco and Bayer Leverkusen player Amine Adli is glad to be learning from high-quality managers such as Xabi Alonso and Walid Regragui. EPA

Leaving the cosy familiarity of club football to go and play internationally can occasional be an onerous experience.

Especially when the club in question is flush with happy vibes having enjoyed an unprecedented run of success, and when the manager is one of the hottest properties in the game.

Let’s be honest, matching up to Xabi Alonso must be tough enough at the best of times. All the more so when the window of opportunity is as small as that permitted by an international break.

And Amine Adli has every reason to dote on Alonso. The 24-year-old forward has thrived under the tutelage of the former Spain international, just like more or less everyone at Bayer Leverkusen over the past year or so.

The Morocco player was a key figure in the attack which delivered an unforeseen domestic double last season, for a club which had never won the Bundesliga before.

Alonso’s spell at the helm of Leverkusen has been transformative. Happily for Adli, though, his coach at international level can claim similar, albeit in a different sphere.

Walid Regragui oversaw Morocco’s journey to the semi-finals of the Qatar World Cup in 2022. In so doing they became the first Arab country to progress to that phase of a World Cup.

In the same year, Regragui finished behind only Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola in the voting for the world’s best club coach, for his exploits with Wydad before taking up the Morocco post.

The performance in Qatar saw him nominated for the best national coach award. Again, he placed third, behind Argentina’s title-winning manager Lionel Scaloni, and Didier Deschamps.

“It’s a very nice for me at such a young age to have two very good coaches like this,” Adli said. “That can only be a good thing for me for the future. I have to be prepared for other coaches in my career because, for sure, I will not play with them my whole life.

“But as long as I can, I will enjoy this time with them. I’m very happy to have these two coaches at this moment in my life and I have learnt a lot from them.”

Adli well understands the unpredictability of life as a footballer. As well as changing clubs, he has even switched international allegiance.

Having been born and brought up in a Parisien banlieue – the area which has been the breeding ground for so many great international footballers – he initially represented France at age-group level.

Last year, though, he opted to play for Morocco – “the country of my parents and grandparents,” as he described it – at senior level. It has meant working with two of the most fertile managerial minds in the game.

“You cannot compare a country with the [club] team because you have so much less time with the players,” Adli said. “Xabi is working the whole year with us, so he knows everything about the players in terms of their strengths and their weakness.

“He is working a lot with the players and he’s very smart. We are working a lot together, and he’s very good because he’s always speaking positively on the pitch at training.

“He’s just pushing you to get the best from you. You can see everybody is playing at the top, and Walid is the same. He is a super, super guy.”

It is easy to see why Adli might be taken with Regragui. Even before factoring all the on-field successes he has enjoyed in the recent past, the humanity of the Morocco boss is striking.

Ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations in January, Adli’s mother died. The young player was preparing for the biggest international tournament he had yet faced in his career, and Regragui was full of empathy over his loss.

He praised the grieving player’s resilience, saying: “He possesses strong motivation, and I want to express gratitude to him for defending his country under such circumstances.”

Adli himself was grateful for the way he was treated, terming Regragui a “super man”.

“It’s like he is a big brother for all the players,” Adli said. “He has this thing when you speak with him. He motivates you by speaking and you just want to run for him, to die on the pitch for him.

“For sure it’s different because when you are a national team [coach]. You have 10 days to prepare for the games, and you cannot work a lot on tactics and things like this.

“But he is a super man, a very good coach. He makes things simple, but we understand it very well in the national team.

“He gives us the motivation and he’s making the group so strong that we want to die for the Moroccan people, for the country. With him you get more motivation.”

Adli clearly is not short of motivation. It has become a feature of his club side over the past year, when many of their points on the march to the Bundesliga title were delivered late in matches with the game seemingly gone.

Leverkusen – or “Laterkusen” as they were termed towards the end of last season – were straight back into the old routine at the start of this one, too.

They were reliant on a last-minute equaliser, followed by penalties, to beat Stuttgart in Germany’s Super Cup, and claim their third trophy in a matter of months.

Alonso praised the “big spirit” for the way the players went about achieving that win. They had been down to 10 men after a red card for new signing Martin Terrier for a rash challenge in the first half.

It meant extra work for the likes of Adli, but he was only too happy to play his part.

“For sure for sure was hard, but it’s also good to have a moment like this at the start of the season because it makes you go over your limit and then you work for your mind and for the team, for the fans,” Adli said. “It is good to have moments like this in the start of the season because for sure, we’re going to go through things like this in the season.

“If at the start of the season, everybody is ready to do this, to run more, and to sacrifice on the pitch, we can just make a great season and have good results like this.”