The 'boss', the 'brain', the 'general' - and now the 'next Rodri': The making of Ayyoub Bouaddi, Man City's £85.7m gem who has terrified opponents since he was 11 and wowed Brigitte Macron with his debating skills

There’s a one in 13 gradient in the hills above Creil, 40 miles north of Paris where Ayyoub Bouaddi was brought up, and the story they tell there of him easing up it on his bicycle while his class-mates struggled with their gear ratios belongs to a wider narrative of the 18-year-old, who Manchester City have signed for £85.7million, being a genuinely exceptional boy.

The scouts and the academy managers always say that a strong family background helps dictate the trajectory of a football career and the young midfielder certainly has that. It was his father, a Moroccan-born bank executive, handball player and deputy mayor of Creil in the 2010s, who put him into gymnastics at the age of three and got him swimming and playing tennis before football took over. His mother, an HR manager in the aeronautical industry, was another constant presence.

He and his three sisters all excelled academically and skipped grades. ‘Ah, the Bouaddis! A name to make you smile! We teachers used to fight to attract them to our classes,' the headteacher of the local Creil primary school told L’Equipe some years back, when they came looking for the roots of a player who was proving to be a prodigy for Lille.

But familial influence cannot entirely explain the quality which – briefly at least, until Liverpool seal their £120million deal for Paris Saint-Germain’s Bradley Barcola – has made him the most expensive export in French club history.

Other talents have blended academic intelligence with sport in the same way as Bouaddi, who is pursuing a degree in mathematics after excelling in his baccalaureate exams because, as he has put it: ’It's part of how I was raised and it keeps my mind sharp.’ Others have also displayed the articulacy which took him to the opulent setting of the Elysee Palace three years ago at the age of 15, to participate in a national debating competition for which, in the presence of Brigitte Macron, he declaimed on the topic ‘does the end always justify the means?’

But the intelligence of Bouaddi’s football – his capacity to ‘see the pictures’ as Graeme Souness often describes the visionary quality required in the deep-lying midfield position which he will take up at City – can’t be entirely rationalised in a process of cause and effect.

It was clear from an early age that Manchester City's new £85.7million man Ayyoub Bouaddi is an exceptional young man

The fee paid to Lille makes Bouaddi the most expensive export in French club football history,

At the levels of football he has accelerated up through, he has always seemed to have that split-second more time than anyone else. Everyone says this. From staff on the Jean-Mace primary school team – ‘he was the best because he varied his positioning and his shots, unlike the other kids who shot like bulls,’ his games teacher there observed – to coaches at AFC Creil, the eighth-tier French side who had him in their academy for nine years from the age of five. 'He was always playing above his age group because he understood immediately where to position himself, how to play, all the while remaining calm,’ said Malek Kismoune, one of the club’s officials.

When an Under 11s coach at the club suggested to the Under 15s coach that he was ready to play in that team, he was greeted with scepticism but that cognitive faculty made him an organiser of the boys four years higher up. ‘He was the general, and below him were soldiers he organised around him,’ the older boys' coach, Arman Doue Diop, said. Those extra seconds at his disposal gave Bouaddi what Diop calls an ‘emotional control’.

The boy’s reputation spread across the region so that opposition coaches would arrive at Creil, in the valley of the river Oise, and ask the home team, 'is your little guy with the headband here today?’ Diop nicknamed his protege ‘El Jefe’ (‘the boss’). Others called him ‘the brain’.

Lille, the top-flight team two hours’ drive away, first saw Bouaddi in Creil’s Under 10s and were relentless to ensure they signed him. The trajectory was maintained. His debut in the UEFA Conference League for Lille, at 16 years and three days old, made him the youngest player ever fielded in a European match. His Ligue 1 debut came 18 days later.

His first Champions League match against Real Madrid in October 2024 – a 1-0 victory in which he misplaced only one pass out of 44 – was a signature moment, sending him up against Luka Modric, one of several in his position he has adored. ‘The use of the outside of the boot, his vision, his intelligent positioning... he’s at the very highest level,’ Bouaddi has said of Modric.

The concern among many in France is whether, despite his prodigious talent, natural intelligence and command of English, Bouaddi is heading for the Premier League a year or two too soon, especially with that price tag and the expectation that he will be ‘the next Rodri’. All City have to go on are his three seasons in Ligue 1: not a huge body of evidence.

From a perceived value of £50million before the World Cup, where he excelled for Morocco against Brazil in the group stage, the asking price has almost doubled. Lille president Olivier Letang was keen to keep the player for another season at Lille on loan, but City knew they were losing Rodri and that there was stiff competition to sign him, so have paid an immense premium to bring him to Manchester now.

‘I just hope he doesn’t get burned and that it’s not too soon for him. It does seem early and a huge ask,’ says a British source who has brought many players to the Premier League. In a debate on the L’Equipe du Soir programme on Tuesday night entitled ‘Could Bouaddi be weighed down by the price of his transfer?’ the France Football analyst Dave Appadoo cautioned: ‘It’s not a good moment for Manchester City. Pep Guardiola has gone and they are under construction.’ But Bouaddi, for his part, told the French press that it’s ‘the perfect time to take the plunge’.

From a perceived value of £50million before the World Cup, where he excelled for Morocco against Brazil in the group stage, the asking price has almost doubled

His first Champions League match against Real Madrid in October 2024 – a 1-0 victory in which he misplaced only one pass out of 44 – was a signature moment

A national inquest is under way about the loss of France-born Bouaddi, who played at all the age levels, to the Morocco national side

Some at the top of the French game feel he will immediately prosper. ‘His intelligence serves him well on many levels,' says France Under 21s coach Gerald Baticle. ‘On the pitch, it allows him to simplify the game and clarify it by playing with one or two touches. It allows him to read the game in all midfield positions and gives him great versatility.'

A national inquest is under way about the loss of France-born Bouaddi, who played at all the age levels, to the Morocco national side, whose coach Mohamed Ouahbi courted him far more assiduously before the World Cup than outgoing France boss Didier Deschamps.

In the hills of Creil, they feel their fresh-faced boy will flourish wherever he goes and the local club now stands to earn an additional half a million euros (£430,000) in development fees for those nine years of work with him, under UEFA rules.

‘Even as a young child, he was a fan of English football, and Kevin De Bruyne was his role model,’ club president Slimane Layadi said of Bouaddi this week. ‘It feels completely surreal, and yet we knew he possessed immense talent that could take him to the very top.’