Ziyech Confirms Desire to Leave Ajax

Here we go again, another day another extremely speculative transfer rumor. In this instance, however, we’re at least talking about a player on the rise rather than veteran depth piece. Here at CdT we’ve hung our hats on Hakim Ziyech for nearly two years, tabbing him as the proverbial inverted winger Eusebio Di Francesco was so mad for last season, and while they may still be the case, Ziyech is so much more.

As we first discussed last August, Ziyech’s time with Ajax (and Twente and Heerenveen before that) has been nothing short of prolific. In parts of five seasons in the Eredivisie, Ziyech has amassed an absurd 59 goals and 66 assists while playing a variety of attacking positions, though he seems to have settled on a midfield role this past season.

While there haven’t been reports linking Ziyech to any one club in particular, Hakim the Dream did at least confirm his desire to leave Ajax:

Since the winter break it was clear to me that I wanted to leave Ajax in the summer. Now I am 25 years old, I have two more years of experience on my side and now I am ready to look forward. In two years I have built a good relationship with the players and the people who work in the club and obviously I will miss them, even if you know that in football you come and go often. But if I do not have to find the right team, who knows, maybe I could stay.

Source: Romanews

While Ziyech took the pc route by leaving the door open for a return, it was nice to see him confirm our previous speculation, which is, quite simply, that he has nothing left to prove in the Netherlands. Ziyech would check a lot of boxes for Roma, opening up a swatch of tactical options in the process, but the pipeline between the Eredivisie and the Premiership carries as much crude as it ever has, so it wouldn’t be shocking to see Ziyech plying his trade somewhere in the British Isles.

For my money, and given all that we discussed about being frank about Roma’s current transfer capabilities, Ziyech is the ideal hub around which Monchi should engineer his summer.