Tarik Tissoudali of Morocco will not play at the World Cup in Qatar later this year due to a critical knee injury.
The 29-year-old sustained an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury to his right knee on Saturday while competing for Gent, and the Belgian side has announced that he will be sidelined for at least six months.
He was substituted from his Jupiler Pro League match against Sint-Truiden after just 31 minutes, resulting in a 1-1 draw.
Tissoudali, a former Telstar and Beerschot player, was born in the Netherlands but made his debut for Morocco at the January Africa Cup of Nations.
In July 2016, Tissoudali signed a contract until mid-2020 at Le Havre, which played at that time in the Ligue 2. The coach who hired him, the American Bob Bradley, was nevertheless, soon dismissed, which caused a communication problem, as Tissoudali didn’t speak French.
In the first half of the season 2016/17 he didn’t play in the first team, and in the Winter stop, he was transferred for half a year on loan at SC Cambuur. The next season, he was once again put on loan, this time to the new-Ere-Divisie-team VV-Venlo. Over there, he didn’t manage to be a first-team-player. At the end of 2018, he was put on loan at the First Division-team De Graafschap.
Tissoudali made his debut for the Morocco U23s in a friendly 1–0 win against the Cameroon U23s, in which he scored the game’s winning goal.
He was called up to represent the senior Morocco national team for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations. He debuted with them in a 1–0 win over Ghana on January 10, 2022.
He has a total of nine caps, and in March, he helped the North Africans go to the World Cup by helping them defeat the DR Congo 5-2 overall in a play-off.
In Group F in Qatar, the Atlas Lions were placed with Belgium, Canada, and Croatia. The World Cup begins on November 21 and concludes on December 18.