The 4^th Moroccan to play for Southampton, following on from Kachloul, El Khalej and Safri, Sofiane Boufal was French born and started his footballing career at Angers in the north west of the country. His form in the first half of the 2014-15 season was such that Angers eventually won promotion to Ligue 1 but by then Sofiane had joined Lille in the January transfer window.

Carrying on from where he had left off he won the Marc-Vivien Foe award for best African player in France’s top-flight in 2015-16, an honour that prompted the Southampton transfer committee to break the club’s transfer record to bring him to St Mary’s for a fee of £16m. Frenchman Claude Puel, Saints new manager had only crossed the channel himself a few months before and was well versed in the attacking midfielder’s abilities.

“He can beat two or three players in small places”

he said but the Moroccan international had arrived with a broken foot which delayed his full debut until the 26^th October when he scored the winner in a League Cup-tie at home to Sunderland. Puel was right, Sofiane was incredibly skilful and possessed such quick feet he could ghost past defenders almost at leisure as witnessed by the Carling goal-of-the-season in October 2017 when he bamboozled half the West Bromwich team before coolly picking his spot to earn Saints three points.

But in between such delicious moments there were long periods when things wouldn’t come off, possession would be lost and good work would not result in any end product. Towards the end of the fraught 2017-18 season he fell out with manager Mark Hughes and there was only going to be one winner in that spat. He was shipped off to Celta Viga on a season-long loan in the summer, but repatriated to St Mary’s for 2019-20 season with Ralph Hasenhuttl in charge, Boufal initially seemed to have found favour with his new manager but ultimately he only made eight Premier League starts and he took his final leave of St Mary’s to go back to the club where his career had first started, in the 2020 summer transfer window. Some were still sad to see him go, arguing a player with his creativity still had a potential role to play, but the manager, it appeared, no longer shared those views.