The 20-year-old Algerian ranks among the finest young midfielders in Africa but faces a huge challenge on Sunday against the continent’s Player of the YearAs early as the quarter-final stage, the Africa Cup of Nations will pit the pre-tournament favourites against the side with arguably the most impressive array of star talent on the continent.
The clash of highly-fancied Algeria and star-studded Ivory Coast might best be encapsulated – and perhaps decided by – a battle between two midfielders; Yaya Toure, the reigning African player of the year, and Nabil Bentaleb, a pretender to the throne.
At domestic level, Manchester City star Toure has been successfully converted from a defensive midfielder – he even started a Champions League final at centre-back for Barcelona – into one of the most feared and powerful attacking central midfield players in the Premier League.
Bentaleb, on the other hand, is usually deployed as the anchor in a two-man midfield pairing for Mauricio Pochettino’s energetic Tottenham side.
It has been a case of role reversal, though, at this year’s Cup of Nations. Elephants coach Herve Renard has preferred to use the experienced Toure in a much deeper role, but the 31-year-old’s creative contributions have been limited as a result and at times he has cut a frustrated figure.
Bentaleb, however, has been awarded much more attacking freedom than he is used to at club level by Algeria boss Christian Gourcuff and repaid his coach’s faith in the final group match against Senegal. The 20-year-old impressed throughout and capped a fine performance with a superb goal late on to confirm the Desert Warriors’ place in the quarter-finals.
If Ivory Coast are to have any chance of progressing to the last four, you suspect they will need to at least partially free Toure from his defensive shackles and allow the four-time African player of the year to return to what he does best; causing chaos among opposition defenders. Failure to do so could hand Bentaleb and Algeria the initiative.
“Yaya is the outstanding player [at the Cup of Nations],” former South Africa midfielder Quinton Fortune toldGoal. “You can see there’s a reason he’s played for all these great clubs like Barcelona and Manchester City.
Whether Renard moves Toure further up the pitch remains to be seen. The Frenchman has already defended his decision to refuse his talisman the opportunity to attack freely by claiming he doesn’t have the luxury of fielding a partner like Manchester City’s Fernandinho alongside him. But given Algeria’s tendency to immediately look to go on the front foot, Renard will surely mull over whether Toure would be better utilised finding space between the opposition defence and midfield.
For Algeria there is no such dilemma. Bentaleb has gone from strength-to-strength since making his debut for Spurs just over a year ago. His defensive game has been so impressive that both Pochettino and his predecessor Tim Sherwood have deployed him in a deeper position but at youth level the France-born youngster was better known as a box-to-box player.
“I tended to use him in a more defensive role, mainly because I knew I could trust him to do what I asked,” Sherwood told Goal earlier this month.
“But in his development at Spurs, he has always been a box-to-box midfielder and he has always scored goals in the junior age groups. He’s not the finished article yet but he can develop into more of a goalscoring midfielder.”
Regardless of the specifics of their roles, the battle between Bentaleb and Toure will be crucial in determining which country progresses to the semi-finals.
By the time the next Cup of Nations comes along, Toure will be 33 and it is unclear for how long he will extend his international career beyond these finals in Equatorial Guinea. The opportunities to add the major international honour that he surely craves are running out.
Bentaleb is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and faces one of the biggest challenges of his career. He will eventually be among the players succeeding the king of African midfielders but will have plans to dethrone Toure, at least for one day, rather sooner.
