As a boy growing up in Catalonia, scouted and then nurtured from a young age by Barcelona, Adam Aznou would sometimes scroll through his mobile phone before matches in search of visual stimulus.
For a period, clips of Neymar were his preferred inspiration. He would seek out the Brazilian’s special tricks, his moments of skill in one-on-one duels, as prompts so Aznou could head out on to the pitch confident and with the courage to take the game to opponents.
Aznou was barely into his teens when he started to witness, at close range, some exceptional, Neymar-style swagger, being performed by a friend and teammate who was even younger than he was. That was Lamine Yamal.
Aznou and Lamine were schoolboys with similar backgrounds – born in Catalonia into Moroccan families – who coincided at Barca’s La Masia academy. When their respective professional ambitions took them along different fast-tracks to launch their senior careers, they remained friends.
With idols like Neymar, a celebrated prodigy well before he joined Barca and later Paris Saint-Germain, and peers like Lamine, the current Barca superstar, a degree of impatience in plotting the upwards trajectory of your own career would be understandable.
And Aznou, still a teenager, has long been tipped to thrive at the elite level. Barcelona saw that potential in him when they took note of his strong left foot, his ease on the ball, his turn of pace, his adventurous use of the left flank and enrolled him at their admired finishing school.
Bayern Munich then promised him a rapid rise to their senior side when they enticed him away from La Masia as soon as he had turned 16. A few weeks after his 19th birthday, Aznou is now preparing to take on his third leading league, after the Bundesliga and Spain’s top-flight.
He has joined Everton of the English Premier League, a move regretted by some of Bayern’s senior executives, although the German champions were obliged to acknowledge that the precocious full-back, already a full international with Morocco, was entitled to move on to feel assured his career was progressing.
His impatience at Bayern, where he had outgrown the youth team, had been building. Aznou had spent the second half of last season on loan and impressing at Real Valladolid in La Liga – albeit at the wrong end of the table there – and in June he returned to Munich encouraged that he was asked to join the Bayern squad in the USA for the Fifa Club World Cup.
That meant a sacrifice: He made an agreement with Morocco manager Walid Regragui that he should be with Bayern at a major tournament rather than join up with the national squad for their early summer get-together.
The expectation then was that Aznou would play more than a mere 10 minutes in the Club World Cup’s group stage. By the time Bayern were eliminated by Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-final, he felt restless.
Aznou, who captained Bayern in the Uefa Youth League, had in total made only four appearances off the bench for the seniors in 2024-25. He had begun to suspect that in a Bayern hierarchy where the lightning quick Alphonso Davies commands the left-back role, he was further back in the queue there than his talents would make him at most other employers.
That opinion is widely shared. Barcelona, recalling the good impressions the younger Aznou made on their coaches at La Masia, are among the superclubs who considered bidding for him this summer, noting that, in his spell at Valladolid, he continued to show the verve in attack that marked him out as a kid.
Valladolid may have spent last season in a vain struggle against relegation, but Aznou still recorded the second best register for successful dribbles of any defender who played more than 500 minutes in the Liga campaign, edging Barca’s dashing Alejandro Balde into third place on that metric.
Valladolid had recognised Aznou’s fortes immediately, putting him on the left wing for his first start there. Aznou himself ensured Evertonians have had advanced notice of his progressive instincts, when, at his presentation this week, he said: “I like to take the ball on – one-on-one dribbling, that’s me.”
Having signed his four-year Everton deal and had his first look at their impressive new stadium, symbol of revived ambition at the Merseyside club, Aznou joined teammates in the USA for the remainder of the preseason tour. He could make his debut this weekend against Manchester United in Atlanta.
But a degree of patience will still be required, advised David Moyes, the Everton manager. “He’s young, maybe not quite ready yet, but we hope he will be shortly,” said Moyes of Aznou.
“We see a lot of good things in him. He’s technically very good, athletic, might need just a little bit to get himself built up and ready for the Premier League, so we won’t be putting him under any pressure.”
Aznou will be alive to the pressure of the international calendar, however. In less than six months time, Morocco host the Africa Cup of Nations, with hopes high that, following up their run to the semi-finals of the last World Cup, the Atlas Lions can reclaim the continental prize they last achieved almost half a century ago.
Though much of Regragui’s ideal starting eleven is established, there’s a hint of a vacancy for a specialist left-back. There’s competition for the spot, into the long-term, too, with a clutch of young players looking to follow the lead of Morocco superstar Achraf Hakimi, the dashing attacking right-back who played such a vital role in delivering the Uefa Champions League title to PSG last season.
Hakimi has been a pathfinder for Aznou’s generation. Like Aznou, Hakimi was born in Spain and elected to play his senior international football for the nation of his parents rather than Spain.
Ditto Youssef Enriquez, known as Yusi, a left-back of huge promise who, in common with Hakimi, came up through the youth system at Real Madrid.
He’s 19 and, just like Aznou, has chosen this moment of his career to push on and gain more minutes on the pitch in a top division by leaving Madrid to join La Liga’s Alaves. Regragui will be watching very closely how Yusi and Aznou both take on their new challenges.
