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

Hakim Ziyech nearly joined Swansea City in the summer of 2016 but the deal never materialised and that will cause regret for the Jacks.

Having finished firmly in the middle-of-the-table during the 2015/16 Premier League campaign thanks to an impressive final few months following the appointment of Francesco Guidolin, Swansea City had ideas of being ambitious in the summer of 2016.

The Jacks began their window with the arrival of Leroy Fer from Queens Park Rangers before signing Mike van der Hoorn from Ajax, but another Netherlands-born target was their real dream and aspiration that summer, Hakim Ziyech.

It was reported that the 2013 League Cup winners were close to signing the FC Twente winger, but he instead moved on to Dutch giants Ajax, where he formed part of an excellent side before a move to Chelsea.

Swansea, or ‘Swansalona’ as they were once branded under Roberto Martinez, had earned themselves a fair reputation for playing a fluent and possession-based style of football, regardless of who was in charge – whether that be Martinez, Brendan Rodgers or Michael Laudrup.

Even though Guidolin perhaps didn’t fall directly into that category, their squad was still comprised of technically brilliant players – and Ziyech would likely have been the best of the bunch.

Hakim Ziyech had a promising few years after failed Swansea City move

Rather than move to the then Liberty Stadium, Ziyech opted to join four-time champions of Europe - Ajax - for a fee that was believed to be in the region of just €11 million, which was a fee that was not at all beyond Swansea during the mid-2010s.

Whilst with Ajax, Ziyech was a key man as they won the domestic double in the 2018/19 season under the management of Erik ten Hag, in a campaign in which they also reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League before their heartbreaking defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on away goals in Amsterdam with Lucas Moura completing a hat-trick with just seconds to go.

He also helped them reach the final of the UEFA Europa League a couple of seasons before that, forming a part of a side that boasted the likes of Matthijs de Ligt and Frenkie de Jong, but Ziyech remained a standout component.

He eventually moved to Chelsea for a fee reported to be around £33.3 million in the Blues’ big spending summer transfer window of 2020 and, within a season, he had helped them win the UEFA Champions League under the management of Thomas Tuchel.

Internationally, Ziyech was also a key part of the Morocco side that became the first African team to reach the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup as the Atlas Lions defeated Belgium, Portugal and Spain on their way to reaching the final four in Qatar in 2022 with assisting a goal against Belgium as well as then scoring against Canada in the group stages.

Having won the Turkish Super Lig with Galatasaray last season, he moved to Qatari side Al Duhail in January, with the 32-year-old former Netherlands youth international having somewhat fulfilled elite potential.

Swansea City's decline was sharp - Hakim Ziyech could've helped them trend in the opposite direction

Three-and-a-half-years after Ziyech’s potential move to Swansea, he was listed number 29 in The Guardian’s top 100 best male footballers in the world – which is a good way of highlighting what Swansea could have got their hands on.

Instead, a couple of months into the 2015/16 season, Guidolin was sacked and replaced by Bob Bradley, who himself was then sacked just after Christmas with Paul Clement overseeing a 15th place finish in the Premier League when they had in the bottom three with just three games to go, having spent majority of the first-half of the campaign in the danger zone.

However, Clement was sacked mid-way through the following season and, despite Carlos Carvalhal attaining some improvement with the side, they were relegated from the top-flight in 2018 and have never been back since.

Swansea had been one of the best teams to watch in England’s top-flight for the first-half of their seven-year stint in the Premier League, but the second-half was fairly forgettable.

There will always be a sense of what could have been if, at the half-way stage of that time in THE Premier League, they had been able to bring in the magic of Ziyech.

It’ll never be known whether Ziyech would have changed things, but the possibility of him not only having influenced an extension to their time in the top-flight but the alternate world in which they are still there will be something that fills the Swans with regret.