Monaco go into Wednesday’s Champions League clash with Arsenal having enjoyed a fine start to the season at home and in Europe, led by the latest exciting talents to come through the club’s academy, Eliesse Ben Seghir and Maghnes Akliouche.
The principality side have in the past brought through the likes of Thierry Henry and Kylian Mbappe, two brilliant attacking players who went on to win World Cups with France.
There are similarities between those two stars and Ben Seghir and Akliouche, both wingers in Adi Huetter’s team who sit third in Ligue 1, five points behind leaders Paris Saint-Germain.
In the Champions League they are eighth, on course to progress directly to the last 16 at the end of the league phase ahead of Wednesday’s testing trip to London.
Monaco kicked off their European campaign with a noteworthy 2-1 success at home to Barcelona, a game in which Akliouche netted their opening goal, one of four he has scored this season.
Only Ben Seghir, with five, has got more goals for a team adapting to life following the departure at the end of last season of their prolific former captain Wissam Ben Yedder, who was out of contract and embroiled in legal trouble.
“It makes you dream and tells you that the club does a good job,” Ben Seghir recently told UEFA.com when asked about coming through at Monaco and following in the footsteps of Henry and Mbappe.
“If the club managed to produce those players, you have to believe in their project and give everything to succeed.”
‘International class’
Ben Seghir is just 19 but it is almost two years since he made his Ligue 1 debut with a bang, scoring a brace against Auxerre just days after the final of the 2022 World Cup.
He plays either wide on the left or behind the central striker, while the 22-year-old Akliouche’s position is on the right flank.
The duo are under contract until 2027 and 2028 respectively, but Monaco will struggle to keep hold of them beyond this season if they maintain their current form.
Ben Seghir, who was born in the glitzy Mediterranean resort town of Saint-Tropez but has chosen to represent Morocco at full international level, is something of an old-school talent.
“I grew up with idols like Neymar, who gives pleasure to spectators, and so I try to do the same,” he told UEFA.
“He is a player who dribbles, who scores goals, sets up goals and helps his teammates,” added Ben Seghir, who has described his international colleague Achraf Hakimi as “like a big brother to me.”
Akliouche is a native of the Paris suburbs and has Algerian heritage, but is believed to be on the brink of breaking into the full French national team.
France coach Didier Deschamps managed Monaco two decades ago and is based on the Cote d’Azur, so has easy access if he wants to see the floppy-haired wide man in action.
“For me he is an international class player,” said Huetter recently of Akliouche, who featured for Henry’s France side at this year’s Olympics, scoring in the final as Les Bleus lost to Spain and settled for the silver medal.
“Honestly I am not concentrating on that. I am just living in the present,” Akliouche said recently of his France prospects.
The present means the clash with Henry’s old side Arsenal, who lie level on points with Monaco in the Champions League table as the fight to qualify for the knockout phase intensifies.
