Farès Chaïbi: Eintracht Frankfurt’s Algerian maestro hoping to guide the Eagles to success
Farès Chaïbi has been one of the first names on Dino Toppmöller’s team sheet this season for Eintracht Frankfurt, and his rise to becoming one of the Bundesliga’s most exciting midfielders shows no signs of slowing down.
Now in his third season with Frankfurt, the 22-year-old appears to be in full flow, having played a bit-part role in the Eagles’ 2024/25 campaign. The former Toulouse man made 26 appearances last season, just 10 of which were starts.
However, he has already almost equalled that tally this season with nine league starts under his belt already, during which time he’s propelled himself to the top of the Bundesliga chart for assists, a position he shares with Bayern Munich's Michael Olise.
He's set up six goals within that short timeframe, with his ability to pull the strings from either a deeper role or as a no.10 making him an invaluable asset to his side. Those assists alone mean he has bettered his total amount of goal involvements from 2024/25, when he notched one goal and three assists.
Watch: Farès Chaïbi - the Frankfurt fulcrum
Chaïbi has already equalled his goal tally from last season too, with his poacher-like finish against Borussia Mönchengladbach proving he has an eye for goal, as well as for defence splitting passes.
For Chaïbi, his rise to the top of the assist leaderboard comes as no surprise given his natural instinct for finding his teammates, as he revealed in our recent interview:
“Since the beginning of my career, I have always made a lot of assists, and one of my biggest strengths has been breaking lines with passes. It comes naturally to me. Playing [deeper] in midfield this season helps even more because I feel more at ease in that position, so I make better decisions in my game.”
As many as six of his 10 Bundesliga appearances this season have come in a deeper midfield role, with injuries to Hugo Larsson and Ellyes Skhiri, as well as Toppmöller’s tendency to switch to a 4-2-3-1 formation at times, giving Chaïbi a chance to show what he can do with greater positional freedom.
“This summer, before the season started, I spoke a lot with the coach, and we agreed to reposition me in midfield, which is my natural position and where I feel most comfortable,” he said on his newfound freedom this season.
His license to create has seen him contribute to Frankfurt being the joint-second highest scoring team in the league this season with 27 goals. “Overall, it has been an average start to the season, but we are in a good place,” he said on his side’s mixed early season form.
While Chaïbi & Co. have been fantastic going forward, they’ve struggled to keep clean sheets, managing to keep just two so far. Nevertheless, the Eagles sit in sixth, just two points behind fourth placed Borussia Dortmund.
They started the season with convincing wins over Werder Bremen and Hoffenheim, before being on the receiving end of defeats to Bayer Leverkusen and Union Berlin, where they conceded seven goal across two games. Such inconsistency is to be expected though, as the midfielder explains:
“We are the youngest team in the Champions League and also the youngest team in the league. We are young but have a lot of potential. When we are fully on our game, we are very dangerous. We need to work on maintaining the same level every weekend, but overall, we have a good team with great potential.”
While Chaïbi is a part of that ‘potential’ he talks about, he’s also referring to the likes of Can Uzun, Nathaniel Brown and Nnamdi Collins, the latter two of which made their senior international debuts for Germany this year.
Watch: Eintracht Frankfurt’s conveyor belt of talent
For Chaïbi, who holds dual citizenship with Algeria and France, international football means representing the North African nation, who have qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup thanks to the efforts of the Frankfurt star, as well as the likes of Wolfsburg’s Mohamed Amoura, Dortmund’s Ramy Bensebaini, VfB Stuttgart’s Badredine Bouanani and Leverkusen’s Ibrahim Maza.
And the Frankfurt midfielder is already determined to help his country cause an upset there: “Qualifying for the World Cup was normal for us because we are a big nation,” he said. “We are not going there as tourists or on holiday. We will try to challenge the big nations and give everything to achieve good results.”
However, before the Fennecs can think about the World Cup, they’ll have the African Cup of Nations to compete in, the tournament taking place between 21 December 2025 and 18 January 2026.
Unsurprisingly, Chaïbi doesn’t hold back with his AFCON ambitions:
“Algeria is a major football nation in Africa, and expectations are high,” he explained. “We are going to Morocco to win the tournament. After two disappointing AFCONs in Cameroon and Ivory Coast, we are eager to perform well.”
Ivory Coast won the most recent edition of the tournament in 2023, beating Nigeria 2-1 in the final. It was a tournament to forget for Chaïbi and his teammates, however, as they finished bottom of Group D with just two points from three games.
The fact that the tournament is being held in Morocco this year will provide extra motivation for Chaïbi and the Fennecs too, if they need it at all – “The AFCON will be in Morocco, and for me Moroccans are like brothers. There are small rivalries, but we tease each other because we are close nations.“
Up next for the talented Algerian and his Frankfurt teammates will be Wolfsburg on Matchday 12, where he'll try to help his team make it three wins on the bounce against his compatriot Amoura.
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