I worked with Bilal El Khannouss for years – Leicester City have a world-beater on their hands
"Top goal." That was the text sent by Genk first-team coach Michel Ribeiro after Bilal El Khannouss scored Leicester City's winner at Tottenham on Sunday.
The attacking midfielder picked the ball up in acres of space behind Spurs' midfield, took three touches before beautifully curling the ball around Ben Davies and into the bottom corner.
It was only his second Premier League goal of the season but his winner at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was more than just a stat. His strike ended City's torrid run of seven straight defeats and if it wasn't clear before, he is one of Ruud van Nistelrooy's main men.
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When the full-time whistle went in north London, Van Nistelrooy shook hands with Ange Postecoglou before immediately hugging El Khannouss. A passionate encounter after a troubling week between a player with immense talent and manager getting the best out of him.
It comes a week after Van Nistelrooy was booed by Leicester fans for taking the midfielder off against Fulham with his side behind. A clear favourite among supporters, El Khannouss is already established as a key player at the King Power Stadium.
El Khannouss was signed towards the end of the window in August for a fee in the region of £20million. The playmaker moved to England on the back of an impressive Olympics in France and joined a long list of talented players to leave Genk.
"Very high," Ribeiro said when asked how high El Khannouss’ ceiling is. "I'm not afraid to say, Bilal could play at teams like Arsenal without any problems. I'm 100 per cent sure that he can do that. For me, the ceiling is very high."
He continued: "The players who leave Genk, 90 per cent of them move to Europe's top five leagues. That's for sure. We thought Bilal was ready for the next step. He showed he was ready for something new so it was no surprise for us.
"As a club, we always try to help the player make good choices. At the end of the day, it's down to him and his agent to look for the best choice but we can help them on certain things. He's at Leicester now and he will do his best.
"For us, it was no surprise because we saw what he could do on the pitch and we're very realistic."
The move to Leicester is the Belgian side's second most-expensive departure, behind Sander Berge's £22m move to Sheffield United. Genk have become renowned for developing top talent through their academy and selling them to one of Europe's elite teams.
Kevin De Bruyne, Thibaut Courtois and Christian Benteke all came from Blauw-Wit's academy and they also had former Leicester duo Timothy Castagne and Dennis Praet on their books.
The development of emerging talent and the pathway to the first team is something the club takes seriously. "We've been doing a good job for many years. We have developed some good names, who are making history in the world of football for a relatively small club," Ribeiro told LeicestershireLive when asked about El Khannouss' journey.
"The work we do in developing players is amazing. It's always a hard job to maintain it, but we're always managing one or two guys coming out of the academy, making the jump to the first team and moving to one of the big leagues."
El Khannouss is the latest to do that and Ribeiro reveals how the club knew he'd develop into a top talent. The attacking midfielder joined the club from Belgian rivals Anderlecht at a young age before rapidly progressing.
"He didn't have a contract with Anderlecht. We had him on our radar for quite some time," Ribeiro explained. "At a very young age, it's not always easy to bring kids in, with school and going to a house family.
"Bilal felt that Anderlecht didn't have the belief in him like they did in other players and it was the perfect moment for him, and for us, to do something together and bring him to our academy.
"We knew Bilal from the age of 10/11 so we kept following him. We signed him and he was technically very good and he started to get fast too. Even though he wasn't [the] strongest with his body, he could read the game very fast and he was the guy that we thought, with how we work, we could help him to become a 'next level' player.
"You always hope that they can make the first team here, then from there, we will see. For us, it was not so hard to see it [moving to the Premier League].”
El Khannouss played regularly for Genk's B team before making his professional debut in May 2022, coming off the bench in a European qualification play-off game with KV Mechelen.
In the 2022-23 season, he played 41 times as Wouter Vrancken's men finished second in the Belgian Pro League. Last season, 51 games were played across the league, Champions League, Europa League, Conference League and Croky Cup.
"Bilal was always a hard-working kid so he made the step up to the first-team at the age of 17. Football-wise, it was easy for him to develop from the academy to the first-team in the training sessions. Body-wise, he needed to get stronger. You never know if they will become Premier League players in the first years, but he had the potential to become a top player.
"I still remember the first day that he came to us with the first team. He was a little shy but if you know a player for some time, like I did with Bilal, on the pitch, he would not be the player that would hide and not ask for the ball.
"In the first sessions, immediately, everyone saw what he could do, especially technically. Physically, he needed to improve but he was just 17. All of the guys who come from the academy know our way of working and that helps them.
"We had a second team but they didn't play like they do now. They compete in the second division, like the Championship in England. At that time, Bilal was still playing with the B team against other B teams, not professional teams.
"For Bilal, it was very fast. He moved from the Under-18s to the B team, just for a few games, then the first team. It was no problem, we knew he would handle it. It was a no-brainer."
After playing a big role in Morocco's bronze medal achievement in the Olympics, El Khannouss was greeted with interest from Europe. Leicester acted swiftly and his arrival has replaced the disappointment of losing last year’s Player of the Season Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.
In his absence, Genk are flying high in the Pro League. They sit top of the table with Club Brugge chasing them after 23 games and the next crop of youngsters are impressing with Jarne Steuckers (22), Christopher Bonsu Baah (20), Konstantinos Karetsas (17) and Noah Adedeji-Sternberg (19) all playing regularly.
El Khannouss' admiration from Leicester fans has only increased in recent months, more so after his winner against Tottenham. But his start to life in England is only the beginning and van Nistelrooy will be hoping his side reap the rewards of that.
“The fans loved him [at Genk]," Ribeiro continued. "Even at such a young age, he was the one deciding the tempo of the game. When he started, the team was in a difficult moment and he stepped up. He was becoming a leader of the team.
"Fans loved him because he worked his *** off every single game. Also, in training sessions, he was top. For example, if we had a tough week with games and he was tired, sometimes the head coach would tell him not to go out and do extra, but he was so stubborn that he asked me to do extra with him even though he was tired. Sometimes I had to shove him off the training pitch! That’s typical Bilal.
"He’s not the type of guy who, now he’s at Leicester City, to go, ‘OK, I made it to the Premier League and it’s good for me’. No. He’s the sort of guy who will always want to improve and one day, hopefully, go to a bigger club than Leicester. He has a long way to go but the potential is there.”
