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Hannibal Mejbri has played just eight minutes for Manchester United's first team but the 19-year-old midfielder is hailed as Tunisia's great hope for the future... So can the teenager be their hero in tonight's AFCON quarter-final with Burkina Faso?

If your name is Hannibal and your parents are Tunisians, there is only one destiny and you cannot avoid it.

Even though you were born and raised in France, played a dozen of matches for the French youth national teams and then signed for Manchester United, the calling of the land where the homonymous great Carthaginian general and statesman reigned cannot be ignored.

The Tunisian football association (FTF) was aware of this and, when the 18-year-old Hannibal Mejbri agreed to represent the Tunisian national team at the end of May 2021, they set up a press conference in a hotel in Carthage, Tunis, to welcome the player that is widely considered as the new great star of Tunisian football.