🏆 FA Cup Player of the Week: The symbol of a revolution | OneFootball

The 2023 FA Cup third round was a classic of the genre with some great moments and huge upsets.

And our Player of the Week is …

Anass Zaroury (Burnley)

It was difficult to know what to expect when Vincent Kompany took over as Burnley manager in the summer.

The Belgian had done a solid job in his first managerial assignment at Anderlecht in his homeland, but taking over an unfashionable Clarets side who had just been relegated from the Premier League was going to be a very different assignment.

Kompany’s task got even tougher when a number of Burnley’s key players were cherry-picked by top flight clubs in the summer transfer window, and his decision to replace those established stars with young, unproven talent seemed like a recipe for … if not disaster, then at least great difficulty.

So far it has been anything but. Burnley are five points clear at the top of the Championship and now into the FA Cup fourth round after an impressive victory away at Premier League Bournemouth on Saturday.

The scorer of two of their goals in that 4-2 win was Anass Zaroury, a player who is symbolic of Kompany’s Turf Moor revolution.

The 22-year-old moved to Lancashire from Belgian side RSC Charleroi for just €4m in the summer and has so far chipped in with nine goals in 18 appearances for the club.

A quick, tricky left winger with a strong right foot, Zaroury was part of the Morocco squad which captured the world’s imagination at the World Cup this winter, although he only made one appearance at the tournament, coming in the third-place playoff defeat to Croatia.

Nevertheless, his time in Qatar was a great learning experience, and since returning to his club he has hit the ground running, with a goal against Birmingham City scored within the first minute of his comeback game on 27 December.

But as Kompany admitted after Saturday’s match, Zaroury’s virtuoso performance against Bournemouth was a sign that he is now getting fully back to his best.

“He still has as much to improve on as a couple of months ago,” said the Burnley boss. “It felt like it announced his comeback from the World Cup. He hadn’t done anything wrong since arriving back but you could see he was catching up physically.

“He has come back from playing in front of millions of people on the Moroccan streets. He didn’t just make us proud but the whole of Africa.

“He has to get through the change of lifestyle but he is in a good place and today he showed he is just cracking on with his work and not changing anything.

“We started the beginning of the season with a kid who needed to prove he could play in English football, and fast forward six months and we have a superstar.”

If all goes to plan Burnley will be back in the Premier League next season, and Zaroury will then need to prove that he can do it at the very top level too.

But the early signs are looking very, very promising.