Photo by Ed Sykes/Getty Images
Photo by Ed Sykes/Getty Images
Everton will soon need to make changes to their defence, and it has today been reported that the club have eyes on Rennes centre-back Abdelhamid Ait Boudlal.
It has been a solid start to the new season for Everton’s backline, which has kept five clean sheets from seven games so far.
Both James Tarkowski and Jarrad Branthwaite have come in for high praise, and Vitalii Mykolenko has also started the new campaign well. And new signing Ainsley Maitland-Niles has settled relatively quickly.
But Everton will need to sign a new centre-back in the summer of 2027, or perhaps even January.
And Abdelhamid Ait Boudlal is said to be a player of interest.
Everton interested in Abdelhamid Ait Boudlal
TEAMtalk are reporting that Everton have been keeping tabs on Abdelhamid Ait Boudlal.
The Morocco international is said to be attracting significant attention at the moment following a string of good performances for Rennes. As well as Everton, there is supposedly interest from Brentford, Hull City and Newcastle United. But clubs in Germany, Spain and Italy are also tracking him.
Ait Boudlal is a product of the Rennes academy, and made his first-team debut for the club in August last year. He was actually sent off in the first-half
For the second half of last season, he went on loan to Amiens in Ligue 2. That set him up nicely, with Ait Boudlal returning to the Rennes squad ahead of 2026/27. So far this term he’s started three of Rennes’ six matches.
That Ait Boudlal is starting to really show his promise should perhaps come as no surprise. In 2023, he featured on The Guardian’s list of the 60 best young talents in football for fans to look out for.
They said of him: “Ait Boudlal is poised to be the academy’s next rising star. Standing at a towering 1.90m, the imposing centre-back stands out not only for his formidable presence in aerial duels but also for his adeptness at intercepting dangerous passes and initiating accurate build-up play from the back. Aït Boudlal recently captained the Morocco Under-17s team at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations and scored two goals in the tournament, attracting interest from several top-tier French clubs.”
Everton’s new John Stones?
Of course, in the summer there were a lot of links to John Stones but in the end he joined Inter Milan after running down his contract at Manchester City.
Plenty of Everton fans had longed to see him return, but perhaps Ait Boudlal could potentially be their new version of him.
Squawka data shows that he has a superb pass completion rate of 93% so far this season in Ligue 1. That is better than both Tarkowski’s and Branthwaite’s in the Premier League (83% and 84%).
He also actually has a higher aerial duel success rate than the Everton pair (90% vs 77% and 68%).
It has to be said that Ait Boudlal is not as aesthetically pleasing as Stones is. That said, few players are.
But he looks to break the lines like that former Everton man, either by passing the ball or with a carry – and those are important traits for any centre-back today.