Do we like them?

Do we like Riyad Mahrez?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up and the stains are small, but the verified good deeds are thin, so he lands mid-table rather than near the top.

Mahrez is the winger who went from Leicester City to Manchester City, then on to Saudi club Al-Ahli, and who captained Algeria to the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations title. By the time he retired from the national side in July 2026 he had 119 caps and 40 goals. We couldn't pull a properly dated source on his childhood, so that part of the story is a gap here.

The off-field stains are small. In 2019 an employment judge ordered Mahrez to pay a former household employee a net £3,612 in unpaid wages, plus £150 in damages, finding an unauthorised deduction from her pay; the report didn't carry any response from him. Back in 2016 he admitted to magistrates he hadn't told police who was driving his car on a set date, and was fined £900, given six points and banned for six months.

On the harm test, we found no comment from him on LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines or the climate, and no slide into grievance or conspiracy theories. He has played in Saudi Arabia and now Qatar, and we found nothing from him either way on those places' politics. His one visible political act is Palestine: in May 2021 he tweeted a Palestinian flag with the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah and waved a flag at Manchester City's title celebration. Whether you read that as solidarity with civilians or as taking a side depends on where you stand.

The recent noise is from the World Cup. Algeria and Austria drew 3-3 in the last group game, a result that sent both through and knocked out Iran. Fans and pundits alleged the draw was mutually arranged, and Austria's coach Ralf Rangnick rejected that. Mahrez, who scored Algeria's third, said the closing stages were “a bit awkward, to be honest” but that he had to shoot when the ball came to him.

A smaller stoush came in April, when the Asian Football Confederation fined him US$10,000 for failing to appear in the mixed zone after the Champions League final against Vissel Kobe. That was a media-duty breach, the same one other players were fined for. The report carried no response from him.

On the good side, the record we can verify is thin. After Al-Ahli's second straight AFC Champions League win he reportedly gave teammates engraved Rolex watches, which is a generous gesture rather than a cause. A 2020 report shows he denied the rumour that he gave €4.5 million to Algeria's virus response, so we won't credit him with it.