If reports are to be believed, Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane’s son, Luca Zidane, has expressed his desire to play for the Algerian national team instead of France.
DZ Football broke the news on Twitter.
BREAKING: Zinedine Zidane’s son Luca Zidane wants to play for Algeria.
[via @mohssenpatriota] pic.twitter.com/GdPw5ej1CK
— DZ Football (@DZFootball_en) July 24, 2019
On 31 March this year, DZ football had themselves stated that Luca is in fact eligible to feature in Algeria football squad through his grandparents. Notably, Zinedine Zidane’s parents are in fact originally from Algeria.
Luca Zidane starts in goal for Real Madrid tonight. He’s eligible to play for Algeria through his grandparents.
— DZ Football (@DZFootball_en) March 31, 2019
The 21-year old footballer is presently a goalkeeper for a Spanish Football club- Racing Santander which plays in the Segunda division of the La Liga league.
As far as his international appearances are concerned, Luca has featured in U-16, U-17, U-18, U-19 and U-20 teams of France. He was also a part of the Europa Championship winning U-17 French team in 2015.
Although Luca is extremely talented and skilful, he faces intense competition to break into the senior national team in France. This is because there are already other established goalkeepers in the French team like Steve Mandanda, Alphonse Areola, Benoit Costil, Mike Maignan and Benjamin Lecomte.
Thus, this could be one of the big reasons why he would want to play for Algeria and not France. The same reason has also been cited in the Algerian website Competition.dz.
Algeria’s preferred goalkeepers at the moment are Azzedine Doukha and Rais M’Bolhi. With them being 32 and 33 years of age respectively, Luca Zidane’s chances of getting a break in Algeria might be much brighter.
Algeria, on the other hand, impressed with their splendid performance in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations as they went on to clinch the coveted trophy.