68 minutes, and everyone in the north knows his name
Khalil Ayari has not started a Ligue 2 match yet. Sixty-eight minutes across three substitute appearances, that is the entire body of work. It has been enough.
The 21-year-old Tunisia winger is on loan at Dunkerque from Paris Saint-Germain, his first senior season in Europe. Thrown on late in the 4-2 win over Grenoble on opening day, he produced a couple of touches you rarely see at this level. He also did the less glamorous thing that matters more in Ligue 2: held the ball up and won fouls when his side needed the game to slow down.
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The Reims penalty that told the story
Home to Reims, 3-1 down on the hour, Albert Sanchez sent him on with half an hour to play. The left-footer was brought down in the box, Robinet buried the penalty seven minutes into stoppage time, and Dunkerque walked off with a 3-3 draw nobody in the ground had seen coming.
His manager is not hiding his enthusiasm. “I think he is the sort of player our team was missing. He played at the World Cup with Tunisia, then started training with PSG’s first team, so he is ready,” Sanchez said recently.
Even in Friday’s 1-0 home defeat to Montpellier, he was one of the few things worth watching. Twenty-six minutes on the pitch, and La Voix du Nord put it well: the Paris loanee “showed he has fire in his legs and maybe gold in his feet”.
A €1.5m bet from Paris
PSG did not stumble into this. They bought Ayari outright from Stade Tunisien this summer for €1.5m, then sent him off to learn the trade somewhere harder. Pocket change for Paris. For the player, it is the usual road for a dribbler who needs polishing before anyone in the capital says the words “first team” out loud.
The rough edges are obvious enough. La Voix du Nord points at his team play first, then consistency and end product. Three cameos are not a season, and Dunkerque, beaten on Friday, have plenty else to fix. Still, the crowd has already started waiting for the fourth official’s board.
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