Rising midfielder Rayane Bounida has opted to represent Morocco internationally, declining to continue with Belgium despite efforts by the country\u2019s football federation to retain the highly rated prospect.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old AFC Ajax player recently informed Belgian officials of his decision, leading to his absence from the latest under-21 squad selection. The Royal Belgian Football Association said it respected the player\u2019s choice, while adding that they regret the outcome<\/a>, Dutch media HLN reported.<\/p>\n Bounida, who has made more than 40 appearances for Belgium across youth levels, chose to switch allegiance to Morocco, citing personal reasons.<\/p>\n Morocco has increasingly attracted players developed in European academies as it builds on recent international performances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising midfielder Rayane Bounida has opted to represent Morocco internationally, declining to continue with Belgium despite efforts by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[101],"tags":[199,26239,200,9665],"class_list":["post-46279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-amsterdam","tag-amsterdam","tag-football-in-morocco","tag-netherlands","tag-rayane-bounida"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116278206601170439","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}