Swansea City must still regret seeing £33.3m star slip through their fingers – He won the UCL at Chelsea.

Swansea City had aspirations of being ambitious in the summer of 2016 after finishing comfortably in the middle of the league during the 2015–16 Premier League season, thanks to an outstanding last few months after the hiring of Francesco Guidolin.

Leroy Fer from Queens Park Rangers opened the window for the Jacks, who then signed Mike van der Hoorn from Ajax. However, their true goal and aim that summer was Hakim Ziyech, a Dutchman.

The FC Twente winger was reportedly on the verge of joining the 2013 League Cup winners, but he chose to join the Dutch powerhouse Ajax, where he was a member of a stellar team, before joining Chelsea.

Regardless of who was in charge—Martinez, Brendan Rodgers, or Michael Laudrup—Swansea, or “Swansalona,” as they were formerly known under Roberto Martinez, had established a solid reputation for playing a fluid and possession-based type of football.

Although Guidolin would not have been in that category, their team still included technically excellent players, and Ziyech would have probably been the finest of them all.

Following his unsuccessful move to Swansea City, Hakim Ziyech enjoyed a promising few years.

Instead of relocating to the then-Liberty Stadium, Ziyech chose to sign with four-time European winners Ajax for an estimated €11 million, which was well below Swansea’s asking price in the mid-2010s.

Under Erik ten Hag’s leadership, Ziyech was instrumental in helping Ajax win the domestic double in the 2018–19 season. During that season, they also advanced to the UEFA Champions League semi-finals before suffering a devastating loss to Tottenham Hotspur on away goals in Amsterdam, where Lucas Moura completed a hat-trick with seconds remaining.

Ziyech was a key member of a team that included players like Matthijs de Ligt and Frenkie de Jong, and he also helped them advance to the UEFA Europa League final a few seasons prior.

He finally joined Chelsea during the Blues’ massive summer transfer window of 2020 for an estimated amount of roughly £33.3 million, and under Thomas Tuchel’s leadership, he helped the team win the UEFA Champions League in just one season.

Ziyech also played a significant role for Morocco, which became the first African team to advance to the FIFA World Cup semi-finals. The Atlas Lions defeated Belgium, Portugal, and Spain en route to the 2022 FIFA World Cup final four in Qatar, where he assisted on a goal against Belgium and scored against Canada in the group stages.

The 32-year-old former Netherlands youth international, who won the Turkish Super Lig with Galatasaray the previous season, joined Al Duhail of Qatar in January after partially realising his elite potential.

 

Hakim Ziyech had the opportunity to steer Swansea City in the other way, but instead they fell precipitously.

The fact that Ziyech was ranked number 29 in The Guardian’s ranking of the top 100 male football players in the world three and a half years after his possible transfer to Swansea serves as a solid indicator of what Swansea may have acquired.

As an alternative, Guidolin was fired a few months into the 2015–16 season and replaced by Bob Bradley, who was fired shortly after Christmas after Paul Clement managed the team to finish in 15th place in the Premier League when they were in the bottom three with three games remaining after spending the majority of the first half of the season in danger.

However, Clement was fired in the middle of the next season, and even though Carlos Carvalhal made some progress with the team, they were demoted from the Premier League in 2018 and have never returned.

For the first half of their seven-year Premier League tenure, Swansea was among the best sides to watch in England’s top division, but the second half was largely forgettable.

If they had been able to bring in the brilliance of Ziyech around the halfway point of that period in THE Premier League, there will always be a sense of what might have been.

Although it will never be known if Ziyech would have made a difference, the Swans will feel remorse for the potential that he not only affected an extension of their tenure in the top flight but also the parallel reality in which they are still there.