Athletic Club pin hopes on Moroccan novice Maroan Sannadi for Europa League tie with Rangers

Striker making his name at San Mames follows in a long line of Basque target men

Athletic Bilbao's Maroan Sannadi in action against Rangers at Ibrox. Reuters

Maroan Sannadi says he is still getting to grips with elite football. These past three months have, after all, been a fast-tracked rise, straight up from Spain’s third division to the sharp end of European competition. But what’s clear is that opposition defenders are having far greater difficulty getting to grips with Maroan.

It is easy, at first glance, to understand why he’s proving so hard to mark and contain. The 24-year-old Moroccan stands 1.92m tall, broad shouldered and muscular. He looks every bit the old-fashioned centre-forward, the sort of big target man his club, Athletic Bilbao of Spain’s Basque Country, have a long tradition of developing.

Which is not to say Maroan is one-dimensional. He’s rugged but nimble on the turn, measured with his first-touch passing and swift with the ball at his feet.

Just ask Mats Hummels, one of modern football’s most decorated and admired defenders. In the last-16 round of the Europa League, where Athletic on Thursday contest a place in the semi-finals against Glasgow Rangers, Hummels, of Roma, spent 11 eventful minutes marking Maroan.

Theirs was a duel of improbable imbalances – a World Cup-winner up against a novice making his home debut in Uefa competition. Maroan – he’s already on first-name terms with fans and media – admitted he felt in awe: “After five minutes, I saw Hummels defending one of our attacks, and I said to myself ‘Wow. That’s high-class.”

But barely five minutes later, he saw panic from the German. Hummels misplaced a pass, Maroan was alive to the opportunity to intercept and as he lengthened his stride, in possession, Hummels interrupted the young striker’s run with a crude foul. A red card followed, allowing Athletic, 2-1 down from the first leg in Italy, to mount what was to be a successful comeback – 3-1 on the night – against a Roma reduced to 10 men. Three weeks later Hummels, 36, announced he would be retiring from football at the end of this season.

Maraon, who turned 24 on February 1, the day he signed for Athletic from nearby Barakaldo, has carried on winning duels against far worldlier players than he.

“He’s a very powerful forward, everyone can see that,” says the Athletic head coach Ernesto Valverde. “He never shies away from physical contact and he’s quick. For me he’s done very well when you remember that [only very recently] he was playing in division three.”

Maroan scored his last goal for Barakaldo, in Spain’s third tier, in mid-January, ironically in a 2-0 win against Bilbao Athletic, feeder team for the club that was by then preparing to snap him up for €3 million.

Athletic had identified a footballer who fitted their needs, both as the kind of centre-forward who would thrive on the service from the wings of the star Williams brothers, Inaki and Nico, and, importantly, one who answered the unique requirements that Athletic put on every player who wears the club’s jersey: that they must have a connection with the Basque region, having been born there, or being from a family rooted in the territory or having spent significant formative years in the area.

Maroan was born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the administrative capital of Spain’s Basque Country, the son of parents who had moved from Morocco in the 1970s. His father would later help open the first halal butcher’s shop in Vitoria’s old town. Maroan, one of five children, developed as a footballer through local clubs before signing his first adult contract with Alaves in Vitoria. They loaned him to Barakaldo last summer, the move that was to jump-start his senior career.

The step up from regionalised division three to Spain’s top flight and to performing in front of big, passionate crowds had felt like a big leap, he admitted after his Athletic debut.

“You’re playing up against well prepared opponents, some of them with similar physical strength to mine,” he noted. On his first appearance in an away stadium, at Espanyol, Athletic’s players heard racial abuse directed from the crowd at Maroan, as at Inaki Williams, the Bilbao-born Ghana international. Next game, his first home start in front of a welcoming San Mames, Athletic’s atmospheric arena, he scored his first goal, against Real Valladolid.

His impact in consolidating his club’s top-four position in the Spanish table has grown steadily. And rival defenders have come to dread duelling with Maroan.

He’s already high on the list of the most fouled players per 90 minutes in La Liga. Ten days ago, his Athletic were again playing 11 against 10 against fifth-placed Villarreal after Pape Gueye fell into the Hummels trap, sent off for a mistimed tackle on Maroan.

At the weekend, Athletic mounted their stirring comeback from 1-0 down to Rayo Vallecano only once Valverde had brought Maroan off the bench. He was soon being wrestled to the ground in the Rayo penalty area to earn the spot-kick that drew his team level. Maroan then delivered the pass for Athletic’s third goal in a 3-1 win.

This weekend it will be the central defenders of the reigning Spanish champions who are put to the Maroan test, as Athletic go to Real Madrid.

First, there’s a poised European quarter-final to negotiate, Rangers having arrived in Bilbao on the back of a goalless draw in the first leg in Glasgow. The stakes for Athletic are high. San Mames is to host the Europa League final next month, a potentially perfect showcase for a club on the rise and proud of its commitment to locally-sourced talent.

There’s a subtext, too, around the duel of centre-forwards. Rangers’ Hamza Igamane, enjoying a breakthrough first season in Europe, and Athletic’s Maroan did not coincide on the Ibrox pitch last week, but would anticipate doing so at some stage in the second leg. They both eye a long future with the Morocco national team, for whom Igamane, 22, made his debut last month with Walid Regragui, the Morocco head coach, making clear Maroan had also been in his thoughts.

“Maroan is new, in that he’s only played a few games at the top level, but he’s on our shortlist and was very close to a full call-up,” said Regragui, aware Maroan is also eligible to play for Spain but that the player has spoken openly of his ambition to represent Morocco. “He looks right for a future with us.”