Coventry City record signing Mustapha Hadji has had to delay his debut for the club after returning home to Morocco to attend the funeral of his country’s monarch.

The 28-year-old, signed from Deportivo de la Coruña for £4 million, flew into England at 5am on Saturday, watched his new team-mates lose to Birmingham and then flew out again on Sunday.

He was invited to the funeral of the King Hassan by his son and successor King Mohammed VI, a keen follower of the national football side.

Coventry were hoping to give Hadji his first game in a friendly at Aberdeen tomorrow tonight, but he is unlikely to feature and will have to wait until the Cyrille Regis testimonial at Highfield Road on Saturday.

Coventry chairman Bryan Richardson said:

"Mustapha is his country’s highest profile player and was asked to attend the funeral, which of course he will.

"We obviously respect that but it has not been easy for Mustapha, he has spent the majority of the last five days hanging about in airports when all he wanted to do was get started with us."

City boss Gordon Strachan was far from impressed by his side’s lacklustre display against Birmingham on Saturday, when they were beaten 3-1.

He accused his players of playing "propaganda football" in the friendly and has demanded more from their game at Pittodrie tomorrow night.

He said:

"We fell into the trap with the nice green grass and the sunny day. We played what I call propaganda football – we passed the ball around well but did nothing that could hurt anyone. It is the worst sort of football to watch.

"You can deceive some people with that sort of football, but not the people who really matter. We did a lot better in the second half but then allowed them to score a bizarre goal."