Hakimi’s Violin: How Ilyas El Maliki Became a Moroccan Cultural Phenomenon

On 23 February 2025, Achraf Hakimi scored for Paris Saint-Germain at Lyon and celebrated by pretending to play the violin. For Moroccan fans it was a familiar gesture: Ilyas El Maliki’s celebration. A streamer’s gesture had reached the top of European football.

The violin at Lyon

PSG won 3–2 at Lyon that Sunday night, and Hakimi scored twice, the first in the 53rd minute from a Bradley Barcola pass. To celebrate, he mimed playing the violin in the style of Chaabi, Morocco’s popular music. French media first called the celebration controversial. After the match, Hakimi explained what it was, as quoted by Hespress:

« C’était une dédicace à Ilyas, qui faisait cette célébration pendant la Kings League. J’aimais cette manière de fêter et j’ai voulu l’adopter quand je marque. » (“It was a dedication to Ilyas, who did this celebration during the Kings League. I liked that way of celebrating and I wanted to adopt it when I score.”)

Hakimi also paid tribute to Ilyas on Instagram, and Ilyas reposted the celebration in his own Instagram story.

Where the gesture came from

The month before, Ilyas had chaired Morocco’s team at the Kings World Cup Nations in Italy, following Morocco’s matches live on his Kick stream. The violin was how he celebrated when his team scored. Morocco reached the semi-finals, and his stream peaked at 601,000 concurrent viewers. The full story of that tournament is in Morocco at the Kings League.

Moroccan culture, live on stream

The violin was not the only Moroccan touch. During the Kings World Cup Nations, Ilyas brought the Moroccan band Dqayqiya onto his streams and wore traditional Moroccan clothing for each game. He also pledged $10,000 to amateur player Said Aouni, known as “Lawla Dorof”, if Morocco won the title, with the rest going to rebuild mosques damaged by the Al Haouz earthquake and to dig wells in drought-hit villages. And all of it happened in Darija, Moroccan Arabic.

Recognised beyond streaming

• Received by the federation: on 13 January 2025, the Moroccan delegation he led was received in Rabat at a reception held by the Royal Moroccan Football Federation and the Professional Football League.
• Influencer of the Year: at Les Impériales Week, an event celebrating Morocco’s communication, marketing, media and digital industries, he was named Moroccan Influencer of the Year, as Hespress reported on 31 January 2025. His message: “Thank you to my Moroccan brothers and to Les Impériales for choosing me as the Influencer of the Year.”
• Abroad: as early as May 2023, the American gaming site SVG published a profile titled “Meet Ilyas Elmaliki, YouTube’s Biggest Gamer Of 2023 So Far”.

Bubble or phenomenon?

In January 2025, the Moroccan outlet Madar21 asked Saïd Bennis, a social sciences researcher at Mohammed V University in Rabat, whether Ilyas was a passing bubble or a real phenomenon. His answer: he may have started as a bubble, but he has become a phenomenon worth studying.

Bennis describes a shift in what young Moroccans admire online, from YouTubers to streamers, and sees in Ilyas a voice from the margins that reached the centre, through what he calls a new digital citizenship. Ilyas’s dream of becoming a footballer, he argues, came true in a new way, through the digital world: what he calls “digital delegation”. Bennis also credits his use of traditional and national symbols with softly promoting Morocco’s image, and notes his charity work. His advice to every streamer who represents Morocco is to match that reach with shared values: “achievements without values do not make history, but achievements with values build it.”

Why it matters

A footballer at PSG borrowing a streamer’s celebration is unusual anywhere. In Morocco, it showed how far Ilyas’s audience reaches: from the people watching his stream in Darija to the national team’s captain on a Ligue 1 pitch. For his whole story, see the Ilyas El Maliki biography.