Moroccan Star Ounahi’s World Cup Run Nets $125,000 for Former Club Avranches

"If Avranches didn’t exist, he wouldn’t have been at the World Cup!" said Gilbert Guérin, president of US Avranches-Mont-Saint-Michel for 33 years. According to him, Azzedine Ounahi owes his presence in Qatar in part to his passage through this club. Like PSG, Monaco or Lyon, US Avranches will receive the sum of 115,000 euros as part of the World Cup profits paid by FIFA to clubs, reports Le Parisien.

But this sum "will not change" the life of the club, unlike the 800,000 euros it had benefited from in 2017 after its defeat in the quarter-finals against PSG (0-4). "PSG had left us the receipts at the time. Thanks to that, we were able to build our training center. Even today, I thank PSG for this gesture," said Gilbert Guérin.

The president of US Avranches still remembers Azzedine Ounahi’s beginnings in the club. "We got him from Strasbourg. At first, he wasn’t even a starter with us. He started with the reserve team in National 3. He played three games there. Once a starter in National, he never left again. That’s how he was spotted by Angers and then Marseille. Avranches was a real springboard for him," he recounts.

Gilbert Guérin is proud of the Moroccan who, according to him, was "the revelation" of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. "Thanks to Ounahi, the Avranches club has regularly been mentioned in the media during the World Cup. It’s quite thrilling to think that without Avranches, Ounahi might not have been in Qatar this winter!" he asserts.