Moroccan Soccer Star Amine Harit Opens Up About Fatal Accident’s Impact on Career

"We were going to eat with my little brother around 10 p.m. I wasn’t driving at an exceptional speed but I must have been 10 or 15 km/h above the limit (60 km/h). There’s this person who crosses. And then the impact..."

This is how Amine describes, in L’Équipe, the event that was to unbalance the young prodigy he embodied and on whom many seasoned observers had bet. In turn, Libération notes that Amine Harit "has gone from being the best young player in the Bundesliga, and from being a regular in the Moroccan starting eleven in Russia, to a player who lacks "professionalism and seriousness", according to his Schalke 04 coach, and to a reserve player on the national team, which earned him to be absent from the group of 23 present at the CAN".

Shortly afterwards, Amine, who was being prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter, had been sentenced to four months’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of 8,600 dirhams, in addition to an eight-month driving license suspension, the media recalls, citing the player in this regard: "This tragedy symbolized "the beginning of a very complicated period. I thought a lot about this person," Amine confided to L’Équipe, admitting to feeling "a little better once [he] spoke to the mother, the family".

In the Atlas Lion, it was the crossing of the desert: "Although I tried to be the same as the previous season, once on the pitch, I would say to myself "but no, I won’t make it". Deep down, it wasn’t going well and I was lying to myself," he details.

It was the birth of his child, in early May 2019, that managed to trigger the click in the player who, from then on, promises to draw from himself the strength necessary to regain his former level. "I understood that I had to change my habits. From now on, we will have the right to a [new] Amine Harit. A Harit who has finally learned to know what is good for [his] football," promises the player.