Algeria will hold a meeting on Saturday to make a decision about Manchester City‘s Rayan Aït-Nouri, after his latest antics.
The Premier League side signed the left-back from Wolverhampton Wanderers in June 2025 and he finished his debut season with 1,605 minutes from 28 matches.
This season, he made two appearances for Manchester City and Enzo Maresca didn’t hand him minutes in the Premier League.
His limited role with the Citizens didn’t impact his role with the national team. He missed the September 2025 international break because of an injury. Since then, the 25-year-old has been a regular for Algeria.
Brahim Hemdani has replaced Vladimir Petkovic as their manager after the World Cup. He included the Manchester City player on his first list for this international break.
Teammates unhappy with Manchester City man
On Friday, the Fennecs secured a 3-1 win over Zambia in the AFCON qualifiers. Brahim Hemdani started Brighton & Hove Albion left-back Jaouen Hadjam ahead of Rayan Aït-Nouri and the decision paid off.
Hadjam opened the scoring while the Manchester City player was an unused substitute. The latter’s ‘inappropriate behaviour’ towards Hemdani and his coaching staff didn’t go down well.
That’s according to WinWin, who have found out from a source on what went wrong and the next course of action. They state the ‘crisis’ began when the coach left him out of the starting lineup.
Hemdani initially considered giving minutes to the former Wolves man before changing the plan after Zambia scored the equaliser in the 57th minute.
He then decided to bring him on after Ibrahim Maza scored Algeria’s second goal in the 67th minute. However, Aït-Nouri refused to come on and his ‘behaviour sparked a widespread anger’ with the Algeria camp.
The national team will hold a meeting on Saturday to resolve the issue. Hemdani is most likely to punish the Manchester City player in order to ‘enforce discipline’ within the camp.
Punishment for Manchester City man unclear
There’s no clarity on what sort of punishment Rayan Aït-Nouri will receive. WinWin aren’t clear whether that would include totally excluding him from the camp or just leaving him out of the upcoming match[es].
The Manchester City man hasn’t enjoyed a good run with club in recent weeks. This has already led to suggestion of a January exit, with Juventus as an option.
Aït-Nouri’s latest incident with Algeria will only make it more difficult for him to convince Brahim Hemdani.
