Anass Zarourys unlikely road to the World Cup with Morocco via Burnley -

At Lommel SK’s training ground, Anass Zaroury stood in front of his team-mates, ready to share his footballing journey — an activity introduced by the Belgian club’s then-manager Liam Manning.

Every fortnight, one player was selected to present and would work with Lommel’s psychologist to put their presentation together, illustrated with pictures from their childhood.

“We had so many different cultures, 16 or so different nationalities, and it was great because everyone got to understand where and how their team-mates had grown up and how different it can be for individuals, which shapes how people act and develop,” Manning, now in charge of MK Dons in League One, English football’s third tier, tells The Athletic.

Zaroury’s early football story was one of the more unusual — he did not play in a competitive 11-a-side game until he was 16.

His career began as a five-year-old with local amateur side Heffen in the northern city of Mechelen. He stood out from the rest, scoring 21 goals in one game including a goal where he picked up the ball in his own box and dribbled past the entire opposition.

Aged 10, he joined top-flight KV Mechelen’s academy, where he was spotted by Thomas Caers, former assistant technical director of the Jean-Marc Guillou (JMG) academy.

“It would be an honour to talk about one of my sons,” Caers says after picking up the phone. “We worked together for six years, training 20 hours a week, around 6,000 hours in total. There were not many believers in Anass, which has made what he is doing so special.

“We saw his natural talent. He had it in his DNA, his touch, his intelligence, his game understanding. He is a team player.”

Football has always been his passion.

As an eight-year-old, Zaroury was in attendance to see Morocco, the country his family hails from, beat Belgium 4-1 in a friendly in Brussels in 2008. Becoming a footballer was only a dream, he loved Barcelona and watched Ronaldinho videos on YouTube.

On Sunday, as the two nations met again in the World Cup in Qatar, he was watching from among the substitutes on the Morocco bench as they produced a shock 2-0 win.

It has been a whirlwind start to Zaroury’s 2022-23 season — he was playing for Belgium Under-21s a couple of months ago, registering an assist in a 2-2 draw against their French counterparts.

Morocco had also been keeping tabs on him but Zaroury left the dilemma to his agent, preferring to focus on his football.

After a knee injury ruled Amine Harit of Marseille out of the tournament at the 11th hour, Zaroury was offered an opportunity he could not turn down — a place in Morocco’s squad at a World Cup, something he may never get with Belgium because of their higher quality and larger player pool.

Zaroury, left, represented Belgium throughout the youth levels but is part of Morocco’s World Cup 2022 squad (Photo: David S Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)

Zaroury is from a tight-knit family but joining JMG meant moving away from home to the academy in Tongerlo, which is 45 minutes away from Mechelen, and attending their boarding school. Players there would train twice a day for two hours and attend lessons five days a week.

“It was hard for him, he is close to his family. You were coming to train and study hard on a strict schedule. He was shy, so there was some adjustment, but he knew his destiny — he wanted to be a professional player,” says Caers.

JMG is a unique academy — it has several hubs located around the globe but its players do not play in competitive matches.

The focus is on training to build players’ technique and game understanding. JMG boasts an impressive production line down the years, including Yaya Toure, Salamon Kalou and Zaroury’s Burnley team-mate Manuel Benson.

Gruelling sessions involve plenty of passing and possession-based drills, but there is also a 45-minute session of ball juggling. Every Friday, there would be an assessment for players to progress through 13 ball-juggling levels that increased in difficulty. One mistake meant you failed.

The prize for completing every level was playing in football boots. At JMG Academy, players trained in their bare feet. In the winter, they were allowed to wear socks to stop their feet from freezing.

“It was good for the touch. It improves technique and ball manipulation, you learn how to control the ball and dictate it,” says Caers. “That was the first stage, then we added the team-mates and opponents and built up over years to get to 11 versus 11. It was all about repetition and perfecting technique.”

Caers departed in 2013 to become academy director at Belgian club Zulte Waregem, on the other side of Brussels, transferring some of the methods at JMG but involving more adaptation to the real world (including a swifter introduction of boots!).

Soon enough, Zaroury, then aged 13, would join him. It came after a conversation Caers will always remember.

“He almost begged me,” he chuckles. “He was not enjoying his time at JMG anymore, he was desperate. I will never forget and if I had said no, I’m not sure if he would be at Burnley now. We offered him the opportunity and he gained his confidence back.”

The theme of no competitive games continued.

Development was centred on players operating in small-sided friendlies, including against adults, for years to challenge them technically. Between the ages of 12 and 16, Zaroury did not play in an 11-a-side match.

“We followed the rhythm of the child,” says Caers. “Sometimes, when Anass was 15, he would train with the 13-year-olds because he was finding it tough. But there were no egos, so you trained at the level you were at, and you would move up again when ready.”

Zaroury’s close control and quick decision-making saw him stand out.

Caers sends The Athletic a video of Zaroury jogging around a 400-metre athletics track while juggling a football. SPOILER: It does not hit the ground once.

For a bit more of a taste on what to expect…

Here is Anass Zaroury juggling a ball without it bouncing all the way around a 400m athletics track aged 15.#twitterclarets pic.twitter.com/N8zfPXE8dT

— Andy Jones (@adjones_journo) November 30, 2022

“He was always practising with both feet, running at high speeds. I always encouraged him to be more ambitious. I wanted him to try things, play vertically, make mistakes but get more goals and assists,” Caers says.

The academy had small competitions and challenges, including a ranking of dribbling with different circuits each week that players had to complete it as quickly as possible.

One-on-one competitions saw players trying to get the better of others to earn points. On Fridays, players would be split into four teams and compete in a small-sided ‘Champions League’ with kits of top clubs worn. “It was like a war out there on the pitch,” Caers chuckles.

Caers remembers that once, when the players were given a day off from training, Zaroury and two other players said they wanted to train, so he set up a small session.

Ahead of Morocco’s final group game tomorrow, look out on @TheAthleticFC for a big read on one of these guys who you might recognise… ⬇️

CLUE: He’s now Burnley’s only representative at the World Cup of the current squad. 🕵‍♂️#twitterclarets pic.twitter.com/nBxKqkfAAw

— Andy Jones (@adjones_journo) November 30, 2022

Zaroury reached Zulte Waregem reserves thanks to Caers’ coaching but the club decided to stop funding their academy. Several players were forced to leave, including Zaroury, who joined second-division side Lommel, in the north east of Belgium, near the Dutch border.

During his first season there, Zaroury barely featured. His career continued to drift without clear direction.

Manning arrived the season after the club were taken over by City Football Group. Zaroury was an unknown but made an immediate impression on him and assistant manager Peter van der Veen.

In the previous season, Jamal Aabbou, who plays in the same position as Zaroury and was a year older, was first choice. It did not take long for Manning to realise Zaroury would be his starter as the close control and quick change of direction stood out.

Manning continues: “After a long pre-season you could see he was a cut above, probably the best of the lot, mainly because of his mentality, his openness to learning and his behaviours. He had this humility and was extremely grounded.”

He chuckles as he recalls Zaroury’s morning routine. Every day, he would arrive and immediately head for the coffee machine — which his manager used to make fun of him for.

“He could easily have stayed in the lad ahead of him’s shadow and felt inferior, which when we went in we could see a bit of. He had this self-belief in himself though and our aim was to improve his end-product because we could see the potential in him,” says Manning.

Zaroury was a quiet, independent individual but craved feedback and Manning could be very honest during their one-on-one conversations. He constantly did individual video work with his manager or the assistants, watching clips and then going to practice the areas he wanted to improve. He continues to study his data every week following his summer move to Burnley, the current leaders of English football’s second-tier Championship.

After training, Manning would run one-on-one or small group sessions which Zaroury would always want to take part in. While Manning “couldn’t get him off the pitch” after training, they also designed drills within sessions to help him work on certain skills.

“We wanted to make those exercises specific and purposeful so we would, for example, isolate him in small-sided games to get him to work on his one-versus-ones,” explains Manning.

“We worked on him understanding how to use his speed, because he is quick over short distances. He didn’t need one million touches; sometimes you can just roll the defender, shift it and deliver. We looked at creating extra yards to get crosses and shots off.”

It is poignant that Burnley supporters’ most recent memory of Zaroury was his performance in the East Lancashire derby on November 13, where he scored one goal and assisted another in a 3-0 win over arch-rivals Blackburn Rovers. His delivery for Ashley Barnes’ opener was an illustration of exactly what Manning was working on: clarity of thought, earning a yard and delivering quickly with quality.

Zaroury initially struggled to produce the attacking numbers Lommel hoped for but his work ethic and focus saw his manager stuck with him as work continued on the training pitch and confidence grew.

“You could see the progress,” says Manning. ”He was realising where and when to be direct and use his skills rather than taking touches for the sake of it.

“The biggest area he improved was his out-of-possession intensity. He bought into defending for the team. At every level now, teams don’t carry players, so while he has all the technical quality in attack he grasped how and when to press and committed himself physically.”

It is an area Burnley manager Vincent Kompany had made an effort to point out when speaking about Zaroury’s performances this season. For a young player, his awareness and energy are second-to-none.

Goals and assists eventually followed at Lommel and it attracted the interest of top-flight side Royal Charleroi, who completed a deal for the attacker in the January window with a loan-back clause. Zaroury finished his campaign with seven goals and four assists in 25 league matches.

“I thought he would step up and do it in the top division (Belgium),” says Manning, “and he continued to have a high impact and produced game-changing moments.”

Five goals and one assist in 39 appearances in all competitions saw Zaroury’s stock continue to rise and Kompany, then in charge of Brussels club Anderlecht, became aware of him. When the chance came to bring him to Burnley after succeeding Sean Dyche this summer, it was a no-brainer.

Before completing the deal, Kompany spoke to Manning for a reference on Zaroury and unsurprisingly, it was glowing. The two managers had crossed paths in Belgium and had also spoken about Scott Twine, who signed for Burnley from Manning’s MK Dons earlier in the summer.

The 14th of 16 summer additions to the Turf Moor squad, Zaroury was a late addition and he was given time to bed into Kompany’s squad. Inside the club, excitement was building as his capabilities in training were recognised.

Putting extra work in continued, particularly cutting inside and shooting, which he perfected with his strike in the 4-2 victory against Sunderland on October 22.

Zaroury knew he would have to deal with a new physicality and intensity after moving from Belgium and joked in the early weeks of his time in the Championship that his ankles had already become accustomed to English football.

The attacker has settled into life in a new country. He already had a firm grasp of English and away from the club, Benson and fellow Jupiler Pro League signings Vitinho and Samuel Bastien have formed a strong bond.

Impressive cameos led to him being awarded his first start away at Coventry City on October 8. It was a baptism of fire as Zaroury came up against the aggressive full-back Fankaty Dabo, who was excellent on the day.

Despite his lack of influence, Kompany was happy with Zaroury’s performance, stuck with him and has reaped the rewards in recent games. Six goals in 10 appearances in all competitions have followed, and so has the adulation of the Burnley supporters.

All that remains to cap off a sensational start to Zaroury’s 2022-23 would be making that first World Cup finals appearance, which could come today (Thursday) against already-eliminated Canada on the final Group F matchday, with Morocco assured of a place in the knockout phase if they win.

He will be itching to show the world what he can do and fulfil his huge potential.

GO DEEPER

Every World Cup question you’ve been too afraid to ask

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