With all the relaxation in the world, he lets himself fall, his back to the goal, then his legs spread apart in the gesture of a pair of scissors. Ayoub El Kaabi then hits the ball and, usually, it scores a goal. Since the start of the 2025 African Cup of Nations, the Moroccan striker has already scored two successful matches, before the round of 16 against Tanzania this Sunday at 5 p.m.
A specialty for the Olympiakos player, aged 32 and co-top scorer in the CAN with 3 goals. “These are gestures that we try in countries that are crazy about football like Morocco, and we succeed once in our lives,” breathes Nassim El Kerf, independent Moroccan journalist. But he has a compilation of 3 minutes of returns…”
A remarkable start to CAN
During the opening match of CAN 2025, the center forward hit the mark with a return against the Comoros (2-0). Then he did it again against Zambia on the third day of the group stage (3-0). That day, he even scored a double, but with a header, since he also scores “normally”.
The start of the competition of Achraf Hakimi’s partner is so impressive that a tribute was paid to him this week during a drone show in the sky of Casablanca. This one represented Ayoub El Kaabi making a bicycle, of course.
A movement that the striker performs with a particular posture ― not necessarily very aerial, but extremely effective. Nassim El Kerf dissects the gesture: “He has the flip that often goes to the ground, not very high, but he has the technique to send it into the net. Just in the national team, he must have scored 4 or 5 with the different selections, and in club, just with Olympiakos, he had 4 or 5 too. In his career, there must be at least a good fifteen. »
Ayoub El Kaabi, who became a professional footballer late in life, today has 30 goals in 62 caps with Morocco. Abdelhak Mendoza, who trained him at Racing Athletic Club de Casablanca at the start of his career, remembers a player with a different profile since always.
An atypical profile
“In the youth categories, he did anything, particularly thanks to his size (1,82 m), says the 81-year-old man. I had instructed those in charge of the juniors to let him play as he wanted, no instructions. There were talented young people who gave him passes in the hole. And all this while laughing during the youth championship, they had so much confidence. He was the typical center forward. »
Today, Ayoub El Kaabi is one of the attractions of CAN 2025, snatching his starting place with bicycles. The one who was not selected for the 2022 World Cup, during which Morocco was beaten in the semi-final by the France team, is making up for lost time at a rapid pace.
