Hakim Ziyech was close to a debut for the Dutch national team under Guus Hiddink in 2015, but an injury prevented him from playing in the European Championship qualifier with Latvia. According to Hiddink, if Ziyech had not been injured, the attacking midfielder annex winger of Chelsea could now have called himself an the Dutch international.
Ziyech was still playing for FC Twente when Hiddink called him up in May of that year for a training internship in the run-up to the match against Latvia. “I really let Ziyech play against Latvia, my last international match,” Hiddink says in an interview with the General Newspaper. “But he got injured in the run-up. He seemed to me like a boy who senses whether something is genuine. You don’t have to tell him you’re high on him, he has to feel it. It’s a shame, he really could have played for the Dutch.”
Ziyech was then not called up for the the Dutch by the next national coach Danny Blind, after which the ex-Ajacied opted for an international career in the shirt of Morocco. He says he has not regretted that choice. “If I had stayed with it and Hiddink had given me playing time against Latvia, I would never have been able to play for Morocco again. But it all turned out differently. And I don’t think it is wrong, because I am now about to play against Iran in a World Cup,” he told the General Newspaper. The the Dutch squad did not qualify for the final tournament in Russia.
Ziyech’s international career has been on the back burner for a number of months. Due to an argument with national coach Vahid Halilhodzic, he was left out of the selection in the past international period. In September, the national coach indicated that he wanted Ziyech to show more discipline. “He didn’t look like a player competing with the national team for World Cup qualifiers,” he said of the Chelsea forward at the time. “For the first time in my career I saw a player in the national team who does not want to train and pretends to be injured. Although tests have shown that he can play. I will not tolerate this behavior as long as I am the national coach of Morocco.”
“Next time you talk, speak the truth!” Ziyech wrote on Instagram. He did not mention Halilhodzic’s name, but apparently he reacted to the words of the national coach. In any case, Ziyech no longer seems to be in the picture with the elector for the time being. “Ziyech has reached various limits. It is not one case, but an accumulation. After a while you just have to put a stop to that,” Halilhodzic said at the press conference at the end of September.