Benji To Consider International Rest

Hibs Moroccan striker Abdessallam Benjelloun played his first game for the club in two months with a reserve team outing on Tuesday but will resist the call up he received to the Moroccan Olymic Squad for the upcoming match against Botswana.

Benji’s last encounter with his country saw the Moroccan doctor strap up his already injured knee and force him to play in their clash with Cameroon.

The striker told setanta.com.”Sometimes you have very bad luck with these things and it has been very hard for me. But it has been a very important experience for me at the same time because next time I will maybe do things differently.

“It was very important to me to play for my country, that is everyone`s dream when they are younger.

“The manager gave me a letter for the national coach saying that they did not want me to play unless I was okay and I felt fine and was looking forward to playing for Hibs again.

“After that game for Morocco I felt very good but maybe three or four days after that I felt bad and I had to stop again.I spoke with the gaffer and we agreed that I should stop because when you are playing or training like that then you have a bigger risk of making the injury worse and I could have been out for maybe three months instead if I had carried on.
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Benji has failed to make a first team outing since September 1st due to the injury and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in which his fasting was deemed to have weakened him sufficiently for him not to be considered.

Hibs boss John Collins was unhappy with the striker’s countryman and national manager Fathi Jamal for including Benji in his latest squad for the clash next weekend.

He said ”Benji isn’t fit to go. We will be faxing the Moroccan authorities today to give them our thoughts. He hasn’t played a first team game in almost two-and-a-half months and as far as we are concerned he isn’t ready to play international football.

‘If he remains here we can get hard training into him, arrange a couple of bounce games and perhaps give him another reserve game.’