Achraf Hakimi is the clearest answer Paris Saint-Germain have ever given to the question of what a modern full-back is for. He is a right-back by squad list and a forward by instinct, and for four seasons he has been the player who turns a Paris attack from patient into unstoppable simply by leaving his position.
This is the full profile — who Hakimi is, how a boy from Getafe ended up as Morocco’s most famous footballer, why Real Madrid let him go twice, and what he does for PSG in 2026/27.
Who is Achraf Hakimi?
Achraf Hakimi is a Moroccan right-back, born on 4 November 1998 in Madrid to Moroccan parents, who plays for Paris Saint-Germain and Morocco. He wears No.2 in Paris and is one of the club’s vice-captains, alongside Vitinha and Ousmane Dembélé under captain Marquinhos.
He is quick in a way that changes how opponents set up, comfortable enough on the ball to play as a winger, and durable enough to do it week after week. In a sport that has spent a decade arguing about whether full-backs should attack, Hakimi ended the argument by being better going forward than most wingers.
Madrid, and the two exits
Hakimi grew up in Madrid and joined Real Madrid’s academy as a child, coming through the age groups at Valdebebas and making his first-team debut in 2017. He was quick, raw and clearly talented, and he was also standing behind Dani Carvajal, which in that era meant he was standing behind a wall.
So he left — twice, in effect. First on a two-year loan to Borussia Dortmund from 2018, where the Bundesliga’s space and Dortmund’s transition football suited him perfectly and he began producing goals and assists in numbers that full-backs are not supposed to produce. Then permanently, in 2020, when Real Madrid sold him to Inter Milan rather than build a team around him.
Inter got one season and it was a very good one. Playing as a wing-back under Antonio Conte, Hakimi was central to the side that won the Serie A title in 2020/21, ending Juventus’s long run of championships. He was 22, and by then the queue for him was long.
The PSG transfer
Paris signed him in the summer of 2021 for a fee reported at around €60m, a large outlay for a defender at a club that had spent most of the previous decade spending its money at the other end of the pitch.
It is, with hindsight, one of the best pieces of business PSG have done. Hakimi arrived into the Messi-Neymar-Mbappé era, survived it, and then thrived when the club dismantled it. Nearly every attacking name in that dressing room has since gone; the right-back is still there, still first choice, still the quickest man on the pitch most weeks.
What Hakimi actually does on the pitch
- The overlap that never stops. His baseline output is arriving in the opposition box, from his own half, more often than most attacking midfielders. Defending against him is a stamina problem before it is a tactical one.
- Pure speed. He is among the fastest players in Europe over distance, which lets Paris play a high line and lets him recover from positions he probably should not be in.
- Goals and assists. He scores in big matches and has done throughout his career — league title runs, Champions League knockout ties, World Cup nights.
- The inside run. Under Luis Enrique he has been used narrower and higher, drifting into midfield or attacking the space behind a winger rather than always hugging the touchline.
- Set-piece delivery and shooting. Underrated. He strikes a ball hard and low and takes on shots from the edge of the area that most defenders would not.
He is not a classical stopper, and PSG have never asked him to be. The structure Luis Enrique uses — explained in our guide to how PSG’s 4-3-3 works — covers behind him with a holding midfielder and a centre-back who steps across, so that his forward runs are a plan rather than a risk.
The European nights
Hakimi’s PSG career is built around the two seasons that finally delivered what the club was bought to deliver. Paris won the Champions League in 2024/25 and retained it in 2025/26, and he was a starter throughout both campaigns.
The 2025 run gave him the moment that will follow him around: a goal in the final against Inter Milan, the club that had sold him four years earlier, in a night that ended with PSG’s first European Cup. He also scored in the semi-final against Arsenal on the way there.
He was among the leading names in the 2025 Ballon d’Or voting, in a year his teammate Ousmane Dembélé won it — a remarkable position for a full-back in an award that almost never looks at them.
Hakimi with Morocco
Born and raised in Spain, Hakimi chose Morocco, and it has defined him. He has been a fixture in the national side since 2016 and was central to the run to the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup, the first time an African nation reached the last four.
The image from that tournament is the penalty: a Panenka, dinked down the middle against Spain in the last-16 shootout, to knock out the country he grew up in. It was the coolest possible way to settle the question of where he belongs.
Hakimi at PSG in 2026/27
He starts this season exactly where he has started the last four — as the first name on the right side of the defence. Paris reshaped the squad again over the summer, with Maghnes Akliouche arriving from Monaco, Ferran Torres from Barcelona, Mika Godts from Ajax and Lucas Digne from Aston Villa, while Gonçalo Ramos, Randal Kolo Muani and Lee Kang-in all left. The full group is in our PSG squad guide for 2026/27.
The opening weeks have been uneven: a 1-0 defeat to Lens in the Trophée des Champions, a 2-1 UEFA Super Cup win over Aston Villa, and a 2-2 draw away at Rennes to begin the Ligue 1 title defence. Paris now enter the Champions League league phase as holders, chasing a third straight European title.
Why Hakimi matters to Paris
PSG have signed more famous players, and more expensive ones. They have rarely signed one who fitted the team they eventually became so precisely. Luis Enrique’s Paris is built on width, speed and relentless forward running, and Hakimi was doing all three years before anyone in the building had drawn up the plan.
Ten years from now, when supporters argue about the best signing of the club’s Qatari era, the answer will not be a striker. It will be the right-back Real Madrid decided they could live without.
Squad and player information is published by Paris Saint-Germain, with fixtures and results confirmed by Ligue 1 and European competition detail at UEFA.
