Morocco U23 Market Value: 16 Young Lions Worth €278.8m

Morocco already has 16 players aged 22 or younger inside its 50 most valuable footballers, with a combined estimated market value of €278.8 million.

That means players who are still under 23 account for roughly 32.4% of the €859.3 million combined value tracked in the Atlas Lions Insider Market Value Tracker baseline dated September 25, 2026.

At the top is 18-year-old Ayyoub Bouaddi, whose €80 million valuation places him not only first among Morocco’s young players but joint-first in the entire national ranking alongside Achraf Hakimi.

Behind him, however, is a much broader generation stretching across midfield, attack and defence.

Bilal El Khannouss, Chemsdine Talbi, Samir El Mourabet and Eliesse Ben Seghir complete a top five of young Moroccan players worth €182 million combined.

This first edition of the Young Lions Market Watch establishes the baseline. Future snapshots will measure actual value changes rather than reconstructing them retrospectively.

Morocco’s most valuable U23 players

For this tracker, U23 means players aged 22 or younger on the September 25, 2026 snapshot date.

The values above come from the Atlas Lions Market Value Tracker, which records Transfermarkt reference estimates while separately keeping club information current where newer transfer information is available.

Bouaddi is in a category of his own

Bouaddi accounts for €80 million of the €278.8 million U23 total, or almost 29% by himself.

His position at the top is significant for another reason: he is just 18.

Manchester City officially completed Bouaddi’s transfer from Lille in 2026 on a five-year contract through 2031, confirming his move into one of Europe’s highest-profile squads. City described him as a Moroccan international after his emergence at Lille and involvement with Morocco at the World Cup.

Market value should not be confused with either a transfer fee or a definitive measure of footballing ability. But within the same valuation framework, an €80 million estimate at 18 makes Bouaddi the clearest outlier in Morocco’s young-player pool.

The next-highest U23 player, El Khannouss, is valued at €35 million.

That is a €45 million gap between first and second.

El Khannouss provides established senior-level value at 22

Bilal El Khannouss occupies a different stage of development.

At 22, he is already valued at €35 million and is part of Morocco’s current senior squad.

VfB Stuttgart made his move permanent in May 2026 after his initial loan spell, with the club reporting 41 appearances, nine goals and seven assists across all competitions during his first season in Stuttgart.

That combination of age, valuation and established senior international involvement makes El Khannouss an important bridge between Morocco’s emerging prospects and its more experienced core.

Bouaddi and El Khannouss alone are worth €115 million on the current tracker.

Talbi is the most valuable U23 player outside the current camp

Chemsdine Talbi ranks third among Morocco’s under-23 players at €25 million, but he is not part of the current September camp.

That makes the Sunderland winger the highest-valued U23 Moroccan outside Mohamed Ouahbi’s current group.

Talbi remains active at club level with Sunderland and scored in their League Cup win over Hull City earlier in September.

His absence should not be interpreted from market value alone. Selection can depend on fitness, tactical requirements, positional competition and other factors, and the tracker does not attempt to judge those decisions.

The same principle applies to Eliesse Ben Seghir, who is fifth in the U23 ranking at €20 million but is also outside the current camp.

Morocco has €186m of 22-and-under talent inside the current camp

The squad context makes the numbers more interesting.

Seven of the 16 U23 players inside the Top 50 are currently in camp:

Bouaddi, El Khannouss, El Mourabet, Aït Boudlal, Gessime, Akhomach and Zabiri.

They are worth €182 million combined.

Two more players aged 22 or younger sit below the tracker’s €5 million Top-50 cutoff but are also with the senior group:

Ali Maamar, 21, valued at €2.5 million, and Abdellah Ouazane, 17, at €1.5 million.

Together, that gives Morocco nine players aged 22 or younger in the current camp worth approximately €186 million.

That represents about 33% of the €563.4 million combined value of the current group analysed in Atlas Lions Insider’s earlier Morocco squad market-value breakdown.

Youth is therefore not sitting on the edges of this squad. It already represents roughly one-third of its estimated market value.

Akhomach’s late call-up added another €12m to the young core

Morocco’s original squad announced on September 17 contained 29 players, with CAF highlighting the inclusion of young newcomers Abdellah Ouazane, Soufiane El-Faouzi and Yassir Zabiri.

Ilias Akhomach was not on that original list.

Mohamed Ouahbi subsequently called the Villarreal winger into camp on September 22, and Akhomach joined the group ahead of the Gabon qualifier.

At 22 years old and €12 million, his addition raised the number of 22-and-under players in the current group from eight to nine.

It also illustrates why the Market Value Tracker is designed to connect valuation data with live squad context rather than treat the rankings as a static list.

El Mourabet is already fourth among Morocco’s U23 assets

Samir El Mourabet may be one of the more revealing names in the ranking.

At 20, the Strasbourg midfielder is valued at €22 million, placing him fourth among Morocco’s U23 players and ninth overall in the full national Top 50.

He is also part of Ouahbi’s current senior group.

That positioning puts him above a number of already established Morocco internationals in pure market-value terms.

Again, that is not a claim that he is currently a more important footballer for Morocco. It shows instead how strongly the market currently values his age profile and professional trajectory relative to much of the wider Moroccan player pool.

Aït Boudlal and Zabiri show different development paths

The next tier also contains players already accumulating meaningful first-team experience.

Twenty-year-old centre-back Abdelhamid Aït Boudlal is valued at €12 million and is part of the current Morocco squad. Stade Rennais lists him with 280 first-team minutes across four appearances in the early part of the 2026/27 season.

Yassir Zabiri, 21, is valued at €9 million and received a senior Morocco call-up for the current international window. Racing Santander confirmed his involvement with Ouahbi’s squad and reported that he had featured in all six of the club’s league matches before joining Morocco.

Their positions in the ranking are similar enough to compare, but their roles, positions and development environments are different. Future valuation snapshots will allow those trajectories to be followed without assuming that one pathway should resemble another.

Nearly €97m of Top-50 U23 value sits outside the current camp

The other side of the data is equally useful.

Nine Top-50 players aged 22 or younger are currently outside the senior camp. Together they are worth €96.8 million.

That group includes:

Chemsdine Talbi €25m
Eliesse Ben Seghir €20m
Ayoube Amaimouni-Echghouyab €10m
Bilal Nadir €8m
Jones El-Abdellaoui €8m
Othmane Maamma €8m
Reda Belahyane €6.8m
Adam Aznou €6m
Rayane Bounida €5m

The number demonstrates the depth of the young player pool more than it says anything about the current selection.

Several are already playing senior club football at significant European clubs. Eintracht Frankfurt, for example, signed Amaimouni-Echghouyab in January 2026 on a contract running to 2031, while Bundesliga records show him featuring for Frankfurt during the current season.

Ben Seghir remains with Bayer Leverkusen, whose official player records list him in the first-team squad.

This gives Morocco a substantial pool of young value beyond the players currently selected.

What the first Young Lions Market Watch establishes

The September 25 baseline gives Atlas Lions Insider a starting point for a recurring dataset.

As of this snapshot:

16 Top-50 Moroccan players are aged 22 or younger.

They are worth €278.8 million combined.

That equals roughly 32.4% of Morocco’s entire Top-50 market value.

Ayyoub Bouaddi leads at €80 million.

Chemsdine Talbi is the highest-valued U23 player outside the current camp at €25 million.

And nine players aged 22 or younger in the current senior group are worth approximately €186 million combined.

Those numbers will become more useful with time.

The next valuation update will allow Atlas Lions Insider to identify actual risers and fallers, measure changes in the U23 share of Morocco’s overall player value and begin building individual value histories.

Instead of asking only who Morocco’s most valuable young player is today, the tracker will eventually answer a more important question:

Who is actually gaining ground?

Methodology

The Young Lions Market Watch uses the Atlas Lions Insider Market Value Tracker baseline dated September 25, 2026.

For this analysis, U23 refers to players aged 22 or younger on the snapshot date.

Market values are Transfermarkt reference estimates and are not equivalent to actual transfer fees. Atlas Lions Insider records the figures periodically so future changes can be measured from one saved snapshot to the next. Club information may be updated separately when newer verified transfer information becomes available.

The September senior-squad comparison uses Mohamed Ouahbi’s original 29-player selection announced on September 17, supplemented by Ilias Akhomach’s confirmed late call-up on September 22.