Hakim Ziyech

At the end of the same year, he was ranked 29th in The Guardian's list of "The 100 best footballers in the world".

Like many Moroccans between the 1960s and 1990s, a large number of people from northern Morocco emigrated to Belgium and the Netherlands in search of work and better living conditions.

This was also the case for Hakim Ziyech's father who 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 her husband in the Netherlands at the age of eighteen and stayed at home and took care of the children in Dronten.

Hakim has double nationality: Dutch and Moroccan.

With his brothers and his friends from the neighborhood, Ziyech spent hours playing football on the Cruyff Court esplanade opposite his home.

Learning his first skill moves there, football quickly became a passion.

During his childhood, Ziyech regularly watched Ajax stars on television such as Wesley Sneijder, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Rafael van der Vaart.

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 his favorite sport.

Hakim Ziyech (حكيم زياش; ⵃⴰⴽⵉⵎ ⵣⵉⵢⴰⵛ; ; born 19 March 1993) is a professional footballer who plays as a right winger or an attacking midfielder for Süper Lig club Galatasaray, on loan from Premier League club Chelsea, and for the Morocco national team.

He is nicknamed "The Wizard", a title given to him by his former club Ajax supporters.

In 2001, he started playing football for his hometown club, Reaal Dronten.

At Reaal Dronten, he met Aziz Doufikar who was part of the club staff, and the first Moroccan national to make an appearance in the Eredivisie.

According to Ziyech, Doufikar would go on to become a great source of motivation to embark on a football career.

In his neighborhood, Ziyech often went to the local youth center De Meerpaal to meet his friends and Doufikar, who was also an educator at the center.

During this time, Ziyech has told that football was a dominant part of his life: "I went to school half an hour earlier every day with the ball in my hand. During lunch break, I played football. Once at home, I drank, I ate and I went outside again to play football... whenever I nutmegged a big kid, the whole neighbourhood would start screaming. In my life, I have fortunately made the right choices. I had to sort through a lot of my friends who were going adrift. In the end, my real training took place in the neighbourhood".

Uninterested in school, Ziyech only devoted himself to football and the streets.

On 23 December 2003, only ten years old, he suffered a great personal trauma, witnessing the death of his father, with whom he had a close relationship.

His father, Mohamed Ziyech had suffered from a neuromuscular disease for several months.

This event pushed him into youth crime.

He thus grew up with his mother, who was forced to educate her eight children using family allowances and unemployment benefits in order to provide for the needs of the eight children.

Ziyech would see two of his brothers return to prison for burglary.

They were therefore dismissed from their respective clubs and decided to retire from football at an early age.

One of the two brothers, Faouzi Ziyech has since stated: "Our last hope in the family was Hakim. Fortunately, he was able to quickly realise what was wrong, having four brothers who went down the wrong path".

As for Hakim Ziyech, he was demotivated at the age of twelve and decided to put an end to football.

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.

Ziyech started his professional career at Dutch club Heerenveen in 2012 and signed for fellow Dutch club Twente two years later.

Beginning in 2015 when Ziyech joined the national team, he has donated all attained earnings and bonuses from international play to various charities or to the staff of the team.

Ziyech was born in Dronten, Flevoland, (the youngest sibling of nine children, five boys and four girls) to Moroccan parents from Tafoughalt, a Berber village of the tribal confederation of Aït Iznassen located near Berkane in northeastern Morocco.

Ziyech grew up in the southern part of Dronten.

His two older brothers Faouzi and Hicham were born in Berkane.

In 2016, he signed for Ajax on a five-year deal, with a reported transfer fee of €11m.

The 2018–19 season was the most prolific season in Ziyech's career, as he scored 16 goals and provided 13 assists in the Eredivisie.

Born in the Netherlands, and originally eligible to play for the Netherlands or Morocco at international level, Ziyech represented Morocco at the FIFA World Cup in 2018 and 2022, and the Africa Cup of Nations in 2019 and 2023.

Ziyech is known for his finishing, dribbling, long passes, technique, and ability from free kicks.

In 2019, he was selected as one of the 10 best players in the UEFA Champions League for the 2018–19 season.

"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.

He joined Premier League club Chelsea in the 2020–21 season.