OTD: ADIL AOUCHICHE BORN

Born on this day in 2002 in Le Blanc-Mesnil, France, is current Sunderland midfielder Adil Aouchiche, he is spending the season out on loan at Aberdeen. He signed for the club in September 2023.

Aouchiche’s youth career began in 2008, spending a year with Mitry Mory before moving to Tremblay FC where he had a four year stint and then he joined Paris Saint-Germain’s academy. 

In 2019 he made his debut for the French giants in a Ligue 1 game, starting and playing over an hour. In January 2020 he scored his first goal, this came in a Coupe de France match against Linas-Montlhéry in which Saint-Germain won 6-0. At the end of the season, he was nominated for the Golden Boy Award.

In the same year as his nomination for Golden Boy he joined Saint-Étienne and would go on to play 77 times for Les Verts. Upon their relegation to the second tier, he joined Ligue 1 side Lorient and he featured in 13 games for them.

After just one season with the club from Brittany he moved to Wearside on a five-year deal. He had an exciting debut where he came off the bench and supplied an assist to Abdoullah Ba in a 3-1 victory away to QPR. Following this, he was limited to only appearances off the bench until late November but earlier in that month he scored the third goal in a 3-1 win versus Birmingham City.

In an annoying turn of events for the player, just as he broke into Tony Mowbray’s side, Mowbray was sacked and Michael Beale came in and he once again found himself back on the bench. He had a terrible time of things in a 2-1 away defeat to Ipswich Town as he missed a sitter and gave away a free kick which Ipswich capitalised from. This caused him to be restricted to just two more minutes during Beale’s short stint in charge. 

With our form dropping off at the end of the season, he was given a couple of opportunities off the bench at home to Leicester City and away to Southampton. He clearly did enough in interim head coach Mike Dodd’s eyes during these cameos and as such he started the next four matches, where he scored and assisted once; both in a 2-0 win away to Cardiff City. Aouchiche once again found himself stuck on the bench, for the hard-fought draw against Leeds United and win at the Hawthorns but he managed to start the last two games of the campaign.

In 2024/25, he played just ten games for us, assisting once in the Championship and another time in the FA Cup. He did rack up another 12 appearances during the season whilst out on loan at Portsmouth, scoring and assisting one apiece. With us now back in the Premier League, opportunities for him would have been even more limited. As a result, he's gone out on loan to Aberdeen and they have an option to purchase him for £1.5 million (a potential record transfer fee for the Scottish club). There was some hope that he would break into the side last season, with him previously having worked under Le Bris at Lorient but clearly our head coach isn't a big fan of the Frenchman.

At an international level, Aouchiche is eligible for either France or Algeria (both of his parents are from the North African country) and has so far been capped at U16, U17, U18 and U20 level for France. At the 2019 U17 Euros he scored a very impressive nine goals from five matches and at the 2019 U17 World Cup he won a bronze medal with his country.