He balled hard, now, he’s “balling”: Riyad Mahrez becomes first African named EPL Player of the Year

Early on in the season, a silent giant got awake,
As the day rose further, he left defences in his wake,
By noon, almost at his every touch, he made the back of the net shake,
Now at the cusp of dawn, many goals he had raked, some, he baked.
Riyad Mahrez, he balled hard, now, he’s balling.

When he scored a flurry of goals early on in the season, we were all so sure that Riyad Mahrez’s goal-love was definitely a fluke wrongly spelt as flurry. But, oh dear, see how wrong we were below:

Leicester City’s Riyad Mahrez has been named the PFA Player of the Year for the 2015-16 season.

The 25-year-old has become the first ever African player to win the award after beating Leicester teammate Jamie Vardy and Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane to the main prize.

Mahrez has scored 17 goals and registered 11 assists in the Premier League this season, with the attacker’s form a key contributor to Leicester’s position at the top of the table with three games left.

The latest of Mahrez’s goals came on Sunday afternoon when he struck in his team’s 4-0 win over Swansea City.

The Algerian international, who has been linked with Barcelona over the last few months, is believed to have cost Leicester in the region of £400,000 from Le Havre in 2014