At 15, Ayyoub Bouaddi was at the French president’s place, the Élysée Palace, making a case about how you should play. At 18, against Brazil at the FIFA World Cup, he answered his own question.
In June 2023, the final of the national eloquence competition for French professional football academies was at the Élysée Palace with first lady Brigitte Macron in the audience. The topic given to the youngster from Creil and other finalists was: Le résultat est-il supérieur à la manière? Is the result superior to the manner? Bouaddi won.
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Creil is a town in the Oise, 40 minutes north of Paris by train. Sofiane Khair coached the football prodigy at AFC Creil fr om the age of 6 to 15. When Bouaddi began appearing for Lille’s first team, Khair told Eurosport: “We’re the only ones it doesn’t surprise.” Then he listed why. Maturity. Intelligence. Calm. Self-belief. Courage. And always first at training. And then, after all of that, he mentioned talent. The people who knew him longest mention the talent last. The football world, encountering him at MetLife Stadium last Saturday night, will struggle to find room for anything else.
His father Hassan is a former deputy mayor of Creil, a banking executive, and a former handball player. He belongs to that generation of diaspora Moroccan fathers who demand two things – academic excellence and dignity. Not one and then the other. Both, as the same thing.
Bouaddi skipped a year at primary school. He got his baccalauréat scientifique (France’s national academic science exams for secondary students) with mention très bien (the highest grade) at 16, a year earlier than the majority. He is currently enrolled by distance at the Université d’Aix-Marseille, reading mathematics, while playing Champions League football.
When journalists laugh at this — and they do — he is patient. “A lot of people laugh when I say I’m still studying,” he said at a Lille press conference in November 2024. “When you study alongside everything else, it keeps your mind alert.” Mathematics, he has said elsewhere, is not a backup plan. It is an intellectual necessity.