Al Rayyan, the leader of the Qatari Football League, announced on Wednesday that it had signed Moroccan international winger Ashraf Ben Sharqi in a free transfer deal, following the expiration of his contract with Al Jazeera in the Emirates.
The club said in a statement, a copy of which was obtained by Agence France-Presse, “Al-Rayyan Sports Club succeeded in contracting with Moroccan international Ashraf Ben Sharqi, to join the Al-Raheb Brigade, and he will be the seventh professional in Al-Rayyan’s ranks for the 2023-2024 sports season.”
Al Rayyan revealed in his statement that the contract with Bin Sharqi came “in coordination between the club’s management and the technical staff led by the Portuguese Leonardo Jardim, whom he knows well through the UAE League,” and published a brief video of the player on his account on the “X” platform (formerly Twitter) in the club’s red and black shirt.
Some time ago, Al Rayyan entered into negotiations with the former Wydad Casablanca striker from Morocco and Zamalek from Egypt to compensate for the absence of his international compatriot Sofiane Boufal, who suffered a knee injury that will keep him out of the stadiums until the end of this year.
The negotiations resulted in Bin Sharqi joining the ranks of Al Rayyan, which leads the local league with a full score after three stages.
Ben Sharqi (28 years old) began his football career with his hometown club, Maghreb Fez, in 2016, and he excelled in particular with Wydad Casablanca, which he joined in 2016, with whom he won the local league title and the African Champions League in 2017.
He moved to Al-Hilal Saudi Arabia in January 2018 and was crowned league champion with them in the same year before being loaned out in the summer to French club Lens without imposing himself, so he moved in the summer of 2019 to Zamalek.
With the Egyptian team, he won the league title twice in 2021 and 2022, the local cup twice in 2019 and 2021, the Super Cup in 2020, and the African Super Cup in the same year, which also saw him reach the final of the African Champions League, where he lost to traditional rivals Al-Ahly.
Ben Sharqi won the African Nations Cup title with his country in 2018 in Morocco.
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