Ismael Saibari has emerged as one of the standout performers of the group phase and main goal threat.The Atlas Lions made history at Qatar 2022 by becoming the first African representatives to reach the semi-finals of the competition. Now they are determined to go one step further on football’s greatest stage. Saibari, who was named Eredivisie Player of the Year after helping PSV Eindhoven win the league title last season, was born in the Spanish city of Terrassa in 2001, around half an hour from Barcelona, where Dani Olmo and Marc Pubill are also from. His parents, Hassan and Fatima, moved to Spain around the turn of the 1990s. They first settled in Almeria in Andalusia, where Saibari’s older brother Akram was born, before relocating to Terrassa in Catalonia.
“You’d rarely see him without a ball. Everywhere he went – the pitch, in the street, at the park in front of his apartment block – he’d be there with his ball. He’d run around like crazy chasing it and his brother,” Charaf Eddine Dinar, a neighbour of the Saibari family in Terrassa, tells FIFA.
Dinar was a friend of Hassan’s and recalls having the family over for tea before heading off to watch football together. “They were a humble family and wonderful people,” he added. They lived on Carrer Europa in a working-class neighbourhood that grew on the outskirts of the city through waves of migration, first domestically and then from abroad. Saibari began playing for local side Club Deportivo Can Parellada, a club that became a hub for families from many different backgrounds. It was also the first club of Albert Luque, who represented Spain at the FIFA World Cup™ in 2002, and Vicky Losada, who clinched the UEFA Women’s Champions League with Barcelona. People at the club remember a young Saibari standing out for his powerful shot and versatility. He would be out on the pitch every day of the week.
Coaches often had to tell him off because he would stay behind to play once his own training session had finished and get in the way of other teams. At weekends, he was usually among the first to arrive, even if he did not have a match. If another team were ever a player short, they would ask him to run home, collect his kit and join the action.
During the 2006/07 season, his older brother Akram played for the U-12 team at Damm, one of Catalonia’s most renowned youth clubs. “I thought his older brother would be the one to succeed because he was so good,” admitted Dinar. “He had lightning speed. Ismael was still very small back then and didn’t have the physique he has now.” His father, Hassan, was a bricklayer, but the family’s world was suddenly turned upside down in 2007 when he was made redundant. They later opened a small grocery shop, but it did not last long, so they decided to emigrate to Belgium in search of a better future as a family of five. The fourth and final sibling was born in Belgium.
“The economic crisis struck Spain and we moved to Belgium through a friend of my mother’s. We had to start again from scratch,” Akram explained in an interview with a Belgian local media outlet in 2013. The brothers also admitted that they took a football everywhere with them, “even to the bathroom.”
Saibari progressed through the youth ranks at Anderlecht and Genk before joining PSV in 2020, going on to make his Eredivisie and Europa League debut that year. The versatile attacker now has 142 appearances for the Dutch giants to his name. In 2022, Belgium coach Roberto Martinez invited him to represent the Red Devils, but Saibari’s commitment to his dream, and his family’s dream, of playing for Morocco remained steadfast. The PSV star has produced stellar figures over the past two seasons, registering 15 and 19 goals, along with 14 and nine assists, and has carried his rich vein of goalscoring form into the group stage of the , with goals in the impressive 1-1 stalemate with , the narrow 1-0 victory over and the thrilling 4-2 triumph against .
“This is the peak of my career,” he revealed after receiving the award following the Scotland match. As one of the leaders, Saibari is helping the Atlas Lions roar towards another date with history.
Sources: FIFA Official
