Hakim Ziyech

Heerenveen

2007–2012: Youth and early career

Under the guidance of Aziz Doufikar, Ziyech would return to football, progressing through the youth teams of Reaal Dronten and later ASV Dronten. He was also motivated by his older brother Faouzi to continue playing football and not to be discouraged. At the age of fourteen, he made his first return to Morocco to visit his father's grave. On his return to the Netherlands, he was invited on trials with professional clubs SC Heerenveen and Ajax. After impressing the Heerenveen scouts, he left his home in Dronten to be placed with a foster family in the town of Heerenveen, Friesland, where he joined SC Heerenveen's academy in 2007. Ajax had found Ziyech too small to progress in their academy. Once settled in at Heerenveen, he lived a turbulent life marked by delinquency, alcohol and drug problems, and he dropped out of school at age sixteen. Despite a good relationship with his foster family, who are of Armenian origin "he regularly comes home very late, sometimes drunk," says Doufikar. Having been an academy footballer for two years under youth coach Robin Veldman, Ziyech very rarely participated in matches, spending his evenings until five in the morning in the neighbourhood drinking alcohol and using hard drugs. Doufikar described Ziyech during his first years in Heerenveen's academy:

He drank, smoked and did drugs a lot, the only chance I had with him was to make him play in smaller tournaments. Fortunately,…

Netherlands

Born in the Netherlands to a Moroccan family, Ziyech was eligible to play for either Netherlands or Morocco national team at international level. He played for Dutch national youth teams, playing for the under-19, under-20 and under-21 squads. However, he opted to play for Morocco at senior level. He received his first call-up to the senior squad in May 2015 for friendly matches against the United States and Latvia.

Morocco

In September 2015, Ziyech confirmed his choice to represent Morocco on the international stage. Ziyech made his debut for the national team on 9 October, in a 1–0 defeat to the Ivory Coast. On 27 May 2016, he scored his first two goals for Morocco, in a 2–0 win over Congo. On 4 September, Ziyech scored in a 2–0 win over São Tomé and Príncipe in a 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match. In January 2017, Morocco manager Hervé Renard surprisingly did not select Ziyech for either the preliminary nor the final 23-man Morocco squad for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations. Ziyech then rejected a last-minute call-up as replacement for the injured Younès Belhanda, stating that he would not accept any further call-ups as long as Renard was still the Moroccan national team's coach. In June, he once again rejected call-ups for some friendlies and Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. Renard later apologised for the incident. On 1 September, Ziyech returned to the national side, and scored in a 6–0 win over Mali, in a qualifying match for…

Ziyech is a right winger who likes to take up a wide starting position and then drive infield with the ball, on to his stronger left foot and into positions where he poses a threat on goal, either with shots, through balls or crosses. He is most dangerous coming into central areas and looking to play killer balls to teammates making diagonal runs towards goal from the left. He is particularly skilled at playing deft balls over a defence, and if his teammates time their runs well, they often very suddenly find themselves with a one-on-one shooting opportunity. His movement off the flank means the right-back can overlap. Ziyech is known for his ball control, beating defenders with swerves and dips to create scoring opportunities. He has the speed, balance and awareness to create chances for his team mate and to finish off attacks himself. His movements infield often cause problems for opposition defenders, allowing for his teammates to get into space. Ziyech's strong positioning skills enable him to make quick moves into space to create chances. When he does get into a position to shoot from range, he usually looks to bend his foot around the ball and aim for the far corner. His discipline has been called into question on several occasions, given his dubious record of falling out with several managers at both club and national level .

Ziyech was born in Dronten, Flevoland to Moroccan parents from Tafoughalt, a Berber village in northeastern Morocco. His parents belonged to the tribal confederation of Aït Iznassen located near Berkane. Ziyech grew up in the southern part of Dronten. He was the youngest of the 9 children in his family. Like many Moroccans between the 1960s and 1990s, a large number of people from northern Morocco emigrated to the Benelux in search of work and better living conditions. Hakim Ziyech's father left Morocco in 1967 with his two sons Faouzi and Hicham for the Netherlands where he worked in a metal factory. Ziyech's mother joined them in the Netherlands and took on the role of homemaker. Hakim has dual nationality of The Netherlands and Morocco. With his brothers and his friends from the neighborhood, Ziyech spent hours playing football on the Cruyff Court esplanade opposite his home. During his childhood, Ziyech regularly watched Ajax stars on television such as Wesley Sneijder, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Rafael van der Vaart. "There were a few players I loved watching, like Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane ...players of that caliber. I watched them a lot when I was little. I remember when I was ten years old, I watched their videos on YouTube every day", he said in an interview with UEFA in 2019. Two of his brothers enrolled in the academies of PEC Zwolle and Heerenveen in the 1990s. As for Ziyech, aged seven, he asked his father to enroll him at a football club in order to practice…