“He’s a blessing for us,” says Jagoba Arrasate, the manager of Osasuna as he describes Abdessamad Ezzalzouli. Or, rather, as he praises ‘Abde’ as the winger is known to friends, fans and to an increasingly wide constituency of professional admirers.
In recent weeks, the blessings have been plentiful. First, there is Abde’s presence in the biggest occasion Osasuna, the strictly middleweight Spanish club from Pamplona, have known for almost a generation – Saturday’s Copa del Rey final, against the very heavyweight Real Madrid.
From Arrasate’s point of view, far better it is Madrid than Barcelona, who midway through their semi-final were 1-0 up against Madrid and apparently heading to the Seville showpiece. An extraordinary turnaround – a 4-0 Madrid win in the second leg at Camp Nou – was greeted with special glee at Osasuna.
Abde is on loan from Barcelona, and there is a clause in his deal that means the borrowing club must pay €250,000 to Barca if Abde plays for Osasuna against them. The semi-final outcome meant Arrasate had been spared the trouble of having to plea with his board to carry that cost.
He is actually twice blessed in having Abde available. When the 21-year-old was shown the first straight red card of his senior career, two minutes after coming on to the pitch against Cadiz 10 days ago, a lengthy suspension was feared.
Abde, a player who endures far more fouls than he commits, had stretched out a foot at an opponent off the ball. The blessing was that he was given only a one-match ban.
So, after all the uncertainties, he is eligible. And no Osasuna player has a greater say in propelling the club to their first cup final for 18 years.
Abde scored the extra-time quarter-final goal that beat Sevilla, via his speed on the counter attack and an impudent variation on a drag back, a trick that features high on his long list of dribbling skills.
He scored the winning goal in the first leg of the semi-final against Athletic Bilbao, feigning to cut inside his marker in the way he had to sink Sevilla but instead going past the luckless Dani Vivian on the outside and on to Abde’s supposedly weaker left foot. With that left foot he then fired in a precise finish to burnish a masterly evening spent utterly confounding Athletic defenders.
On nights like that, comparisons with Vinicius Junior, the gifted dribbler who commands Real Madrid’s left wing, do not flatter Abde. His like-for-like contest with Vinicius on Saturday is one to relish.
As Arrasate counts the blessings of having had Abde through Osasuna’s excellent season – if they do not qualify for Europe by winning the Copa del Rey, they could still do so via a top-seven Liga finish – he describes unique technical assets.
“Abde is the sort of footballer that is very rare these days,” says the coach. “He’s got that ability in one-on-one situations, understands better and better what he needs to do, and when he’s confident he has a real edge.”
What Arrasate sees in Abde is an unusual originality: “We tend to focus so hard on educating footballers coming through at youth level that we turn them into robots, drilling them to make the choices the coach wants and not what the player feels is right. That can limit talent, and it can mean players like Abde don’t emerge.”
While Abde did some of his developing in the famed Barcelona system, with its strict dogmas, he did not arrive there until he was 19, signed from third-tier Hercules and debuting for Barca in October 2021.
His journey to the summit had bypassed the game’s celebrated academies, zigzagging from Beni Mellal, in central Morocco, to southern Spain, where his family moved when he was seven, to being part of his country’s historic run to a World Cup semi-final at the age of 20.
At Barcelona, they have watched Abde’s value soar in the last eight months. His loan ends in June and while manager Xavi speaks highly of the winger – “he can be important for us in the future, he makes things happen,” Xavi said this week – there may be a temptation to cash in on him. Premier League clubs, Wolves among the keenest, are tracking Abde. So are Atletico Madrid.
Osasuna’s budget would not stretch to an offer to compete with theirs. Arrasate is reconciled, unless another loan season can be negotiated, to “enjoying watching Abde on television” in the years ahead.
He just hopes he leaves behind a special blessing as his souvenir from the cup final.