Yassine attends an elite boys’ school in Fez in his younger years, then – as every generation of his family before him – is shipped off to Beauxbatons, because the family likes to capitalise on their European ancestry and has unceasing aims of ingratiating themselves with the French who are currently worming themselves into Moroccan politics. Yassine, unfortunately for his father, quickly proves not to be academic or useful at school at all.

Having barely touched a broom until starting at Beauxbatons, Yassine finds a natural talent for it and his competitive spirit all at once. He tries out for the team and spends the first few years switching between positions, trying to find his favoured one. (It never was seeker, that’s for sure.) Eventually, he settles in as a chaser and when he leaves school – you could hear his professors’ collective sigh of relief across the Mediterranean – he heads home to muck about being rich, insolent, and basically impossible to corral into anything useful. He becomes the star player of his home quidditch team almost just for fun, but the local league is nothing particularly impressive, and he is quickly bored. He throws some money into North African quidditch to invest in it, hoping to try and raise the stakes, and then relocates back to France as a second-string chaser for a half-decent team.

A couple of years after making it to first-string, he gets recruited by a Spanish team and goes to play professionally there, enjoying the challenge of it, and the freedom of not being so closely under his family’s thumb. When a world cup comes around, Yassine returns to Morocco with newly added swagger to throw his hat in the ring. He’s second-string (psht), but when one of the chasers has to drop out before a match, Yassine is on, and he certainly makes an impression. In the opposing keeper’s skin.

And so he makes a name for himself: he will kick and bite and ram players off their brooms if he has to. He’ll tease and taunt the other players like he’s a bullfighter in the ring. Whatever makes a win. Not everyone loves vicious dirty tactics, so controversy follows him all through his career – but what are a few fouls and penalties if the other team loses in the end? what’s the point of playing quidditch if you’re going to be a shrinking violet about it? – but fans and quidditch reporters seem to enjoy it well enough, if the coaches do not.

And he is good with the quaffle, either way. He captains his Spanish team for some time, spends more time on the Moroccan national team in the international leagues, and then – when an injury takes him out for good, if his advancing age has not – he takes up coaching for the team in Marrakesh, now rather famous.

And now there he is, in 1890: coach of the Moroccan national team. Not everyone’s keen, but Yassine is supremely confident about this. And – even with the unfortunate stop to the game, the death of a British spectator – Morocco eventually takes the World Cup title. Yassine, only satisfied by a win for mere seconds and enjoying the change of scene, moves to London more permanently and onto the new challenge. Bringing the Montrose Magpies up from the bottom of the league.