Karim Touzani started 17 matches for Aberdeen in a two-year stint, but was the player trusted by Jimmy Calderwood to do a stellar Uefa Cup man-marking job on Atletico Madrid’s European golden boot-winner Diego Forlan.
Dutch utility man Touzani was signed by Calderwood – a manager with a strong Netherlands knowledge – in the summer 2006 from Eredivisie club FC Twente.
A product of Ajax’s academy, much was expected of the centre-back/defensive midfielder during his early career at FC Utrecht before a training ground tackle from future Liverpool star Dirk Kuyt broke the tibia and fibula bones in Touzani’s left leg.
This double-leg break at the age of 23 altered the trajectory of the youth international’s football journey and set off an injury chain reaction he struggled to ever shake off.
Moving to Aberdeen aged 25 ahead of the 2006/07 season, the subsequent 2007/08 Uefa Cup campaign brought a group stage showdown with star-studded Atleti, featuring not just Forlan, but Luis Garcia, Maxi Rodriguez, Sergio Aguero and other big names.
Though Aberdeen went down 2-0 to a goal in each half at the Calderon, Touzani was available to start the game and was hailed for providing a “magnificently stout barrier” to Uruguayan striker Forlan in front of the Dons’ back-four on what was a hot November 2007 evening in the Spanish capital.
It was his finest moment in a Dons jersey and, as a result of Touzani’s efforts, ex-Manchester United forward Forlan’s only contribution to the scoresheet came from the penalty spot after Michael Hart fouled Aguero.
On putting the shackles on legendary frontman Forlan, who scored 96 times in four seasons with Atletico, Touzani recalls: “Calderwood told me for the games against the bigger teams he was more confident (in using me).
“During my career, I always believed in myself – I didn’t look at my opponent.
“Sometimes coaches came to me and told me: ‘He does this’, or: ‘This is the type of player he is’, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to know.
“If I was confident, and I played well, it didn’t matter who the opponent was.
“At the start of my career, in one of my first games for Twente, I played against Zlatan Ibrahimovic – one of the best strikers – and I played very well and was man of the match against the best forward in the league.
“It doesn’t matter who your opponent is, I was thinking: ‘It’s about myself’.
“That’s why Forlan didn’t make me nervous.”
Thigh injury nightmare stymied Touzani’s Aberdeen career
The tone of physical problems for Touzani’s Dons spell was set soon after his arrival on an initial one-year deal in 2006.
He remembers receiving a “very positive” review on both the club and city from then-FC Twente goalkeeping coach and Aberdeen legend Theo Snelders, which helped convince Touzani Pittodrie was the right move.
Touzani also felt his mix of technical ability and physicality in either central defence or deep midfield roles would suit the Scottish game and our national “mentality of warriors”.
He said: “Sometimes in Holland before I played, the referee would come to me and say: ‘Today, take it easy’.
“If I’m too hard, straight away he would give me a yellow card, and I was getting a reputation in Holland.”
However, having impressed with cultured displays at centre-half alongside captain – “very experienced, smart player” – Russell Anderson in pre-season, Touzani hurt his left thigh in a 2-0 away win at Motherwell on August 12, 2006.
An aborted comeback after 20 minutes against Dunfermline at the end of August eventually worsened the issue and ruled him out until late November, and he continued to struggle with the problem until the following summer.
Touzani insists his dwindling deal was not part of him trying to rush back and play at Aberdeen, but a desperation to “fight” for his new club and “to enjoy football”.
He knows now – furnished with later experience as a physiotherapist – he paid the price for returning from the initial thigh problem too soon.
“I always gave more than 100%, and when I got injured and was trying to recover, you need to do one small step at a time, but what I always did was wanted to go too fast,” Touzani said.
“When you go too fast it will only slow down the recovery.
“Every time I wanted to get back on the pitch, I made my injury worse and worse.
“Sometimes you don’t want to disappoint the team or the coach. You don’t want to say: ‘No I cannot play’, so you say: ‘Okay I’m going to play’.
“I was already injured and I started a game with the injury, which wasn’t smart, and it got worse and took me a lot of time to get back.”
‘Charlie Adam, came to me without the ball and stood on my foot – and then I woke up’
Despite the disrupted start to his Aberdeen career, Calderwood signed Touzani to a two-year contract extension in April 2006, praising his “vision”, “confidence” and saying the Dutchman was “perfectly” suited for the sweeper role.
Calderwood added: “He is a winner, a great passer of the ball, has a great touch, is good in the air and is aggressive… He is desperate to play. I can’t guarantee him that, but I will give him a chance.”
Touzani was fit enough to come off the bench in two crucial matches which secured third place for the 2006/07 SPL and the following campaign’s Uefa Cup adventure – a 1-1 draw away at Hearts and the 2-0 final-day win against Rangers at Pittodrie.
The latter victory is remembered for Scott Severin’s volley to open the scoring, but it was a day of footballing and personal significance for Touzani.
He found out he was going to be a dad for the first time before kick-off, and had a run-in with a Rangers midfielder which has stuck in his memory since.
“The Rangers game – I will never forget that one,” Touzani said.
“My wife told me before the game she was pregnant. I was on the bench, I wasn’t playing, but I was happy.
“I was sitting in the dressing room (beforehand) and I didn’t feel any aggression for the game – and normally I needed aggression.
“At half-time, the coach told me I should warm-up and I was going to play.
“But I still didn’t feel aggression, which is dangerous, because I needed that as a player; as a defender.
“But I was lucky because when I came on the pitch a Rangers player, Charlie Adam, came to me without the ball and stood on my foot. And then I woke up.
“I was very thankful he did that, because I played a very good second half and we won.
“It was a big day for me – because I heard very good news about my daughter – and also a very big game against Rangers.”
Retiring from football aged 30
Touzani left Pittodrie in summer 2008, with a year still remaining on his extended deal, taking up an offer to join former Utrecht boss Foeke Booy at Sparta Rotterdam.
“He gave me the confidence as a young boy to play in the Eredivisie,” Touzani said of Booy. “So I had a very good feeling about that step (to Sparta).”
However, Rotterdam brought three more years of fitness frustration – and Touzani decided to hang up his boots at the young age of 30.
He said: “(At Sparta) I lost my whole first year to injury, and had a lot of injuries, and eventually decided to stop playing football, because if your body doesn’t do what you want, then you don’t enjoy it and it’s very stressful playing games if you can’t move properly.
“Also clubs knew that I was a player who was injured most of the time.”
Touzani’s links to current Dons Vicente Besuijen and Dylan Lobban
In plotting the next chapter of his life, Touzani turned “a lot of experience” with injuries into a positive – going on to become a physio for the Dutch FA.
He said: “I worked for the national team of Holland as a physiotherapist – I went with the youth teams and the indoor futsal teams.”
Coincidentally, one of the players Touzani worked with during this period with the Netherlands’ age-group teams was current Aberdeen attacker Vicente Besuijen.
Besuijen joined the Dons for around £400,000 from ADO Den Haag in 2022, and following a period frozen out, Touzani – who still follows the Dons results – said “it’s great to see Vicente is back” back at Pittodrie, after a loan spell at Dutch First Division club FC Emmen in the second half of last season.
Following his three years as a physio, Touzani retrained again, and has worked in IT for the past year-and-a-half, living back in Amsterdam with other half Samira, Aberdeen-born daughter Lina, 16, and son Ilias, 14.
When he spoke to The Press and Journal, Touzani was en route to watch talented Lina play for Ajax women’s second-team.
Lina is an U17 international – but she is not the only up-and-coming player Touzani has links to.
In the years since leaving Aberdeen, the Touzanis have been back to the Granite City visiting former neighbours who have become friends – including the family of recent Pittodrie youth academy Dylan Lobban.
Touzani – who revealed he and Samira previously planned to move back to the north-east permanently after he retired from football, having enjoyed living in Aberdeen so much – said: “Our neighbours son plays for the youth team at Aberdeen, and he even came and played in Holland and we went to watch him.
“When Aberdeen played the tournament in Holland, my (former) team-mate was the coach, Stuart Duff.
“We spoke – it was a funny meeting!”
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