Manchester City have signed Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille for €95 million, with a further €5 million in bonuses, on a five-year contract to 2031. At €100 million all in, around £85.6 million, the 18-year-old is the most expensive teenager the Premier League has ever bought, past the €70 million Manchester United paid Lille for Leny Yoro in 2024.
He is a deep-lying midfielder and a Morocco international, and the job he has been bought for is explicit: replace Rodri, who joined Barcelona three weeks ago for €76.5 million. City have decided to answer the departure of a Ballon d'Or winner with a teenager rather than a peer, which is either the boldest call of their window or the one that defines the next three years.
Read it alongside the rest of their August and the shape is clear. City agreed the sales of Savinho to Tottenham, Omar Marmoush to Tottenham and Nico González to Newcastle inside a week, raising about £172 million in fixed fees, and have put a large part of it into one 18-year-old and a midfield rebuild.
Lille, for their part, have now sold Yoro to Manchester United and Bouaddi to Manchester City for a combined fee north of €165 million, and are the club the Premier League keeps going back to.
Enzo Maresca's first two competitive matches were a 3-0 Community Shield defeat and a win over Bournemouth that needed two late substitute assists. The rebuild is now expensive as well as unfinished.