Ziyech Shines, Botafogo Falls: The Applause Hiding a Deeper Crack

Minute 34: Hakim Ziyech collects the ball on the right flank, pauses for a beat, then cuts inside on his left foot. One touch. The Vasco da Gama defender freezes as if someone pulled his plug. The ball slips past him; Ziyech lifts his head and looks for Cabral. The Nilton Santos stands hold their breath. Then nothing happens. The pass runs a little long, or Cabral fails to read the intent. The chance dissolves like an unfinished dream. Three minutes later, the scoreboard shows a cold line: Botafogo 1-2 Vasco da Gama. The home side falls on its own ground.

Yet Ziyech is rated 7 — the highest score in a match his team lost. And across the Brazilian press, everyone is talking only about him.

That is the first paradox, and the most important one in this story.

Context: a big star inside a club with a problem

Hakim Ziyech arrived at Botafogo at 33. He has worn the Ajax shirt, played for Chelsea, been a name that made European defenders wary. Now he has landed in Brazil — a destination a player of his stature would hardly have chosen a decade ago. The Vasco match was his first start, after a substitute debut against Mirassol. In total, he has played only 125 minutes for his new club.

This matters because it shapes how we read the whole story. 125 minutes. Not even two matches. A sample so small it cannot support any conclusion about a player's class. Yet that is exactly what the Brazilian media is using to build its picture.

Globo praises him. Terra praises him too. Headlines like "nothing but praise" sprout like mushrooms after rain. And at the same time, Terra itself offers a far colder judgment: this team cannot score, cannot create chances, and signing a big name like Ziyech is pointless if the recruitment strategy remains broken.

Two opposing messages on the same newspaper page. Praise the player, damn the club. And I — after 49 years sitting in cramped press rooms surrounded by men — understand exactly what is happening. When the whole press room falls silent, I know I have just touched the sore spot. Here, the silence lies elsewhere: people praise Ziyech loudly so they do not have to talk about Botafogo's real illness.

Reading the match: Ziyech is good, but that goodness hides a crack

The way Ziyech is used says a great deal. He starts on the right but keeps drifting inside. He plays a little further forward, often close to winger Cabral. This is the classic "inverted number 10" model — a creator who doubles as an attacking midfielder while stretching the opposition back line by appearing in spaces no one expects.

Technically, this is a mainstream profile, nothing innovative. But the problem is not Ziyech. The problem is that he is playing alone.

Ziyech is a player of moments, not of systems. The passages that make people gasp — the touch that froze Vasco's defence, the passes the press calls "always produces something good" — are isolated moments. They are not sustained control. At 33, a creator needs runners around him, needs a solid structure to thrive. And that structure, by the Brazilian media's own indirect admission, does not exist.

The clearest evidence lies in a detail many overlook: Botafogo's goal in this match — or at least one of its most notable passages — came from a free kick by full-back Telles. Stop and think about that. When a defender is one of the few players "showing their best side," and when the goal comes from a set piece, the message is clear: open-play chance creation is failing, and set pieces are carrying the attacking load.

I have seen this hundreds of times. A team that lives on set pieces and individual flashes is a fragile team. Results built on isolated moments will soon return to their true level. That is a law, not a prediction.

The individual-collective contradiction here is structural, not a question of player quality. One player performing (rated 7) while the team loses and is described as "cannot score and creates no chances" — that is not the sign of a poor player. It is the sign of a machine broken at the point of connection. Ziyech is not the problem. Ziyech is the man trying to fix a problem he cannot fix alone.

And this is where I must speak plainly, even if it annoys some. At 65, I still stay up until 3 a.m. to watch matches no one cares about — not to admire big stars performing, but to find the core beneath the numbers. And the core at Botafogo right now is not Ziyech. It is a club built around a 33-year-old name while functional attackers are absent.

I remember 2026, sitting in an all-male press room in Incheon, asking a coach straight out whether pairing a 35-year-old centre-back with a 20-year-old defender was suicide. The room sneered. The coach went silent for ten seconds, then admitted it. I tell this story not to boast. I tell it to say: the right questions are usually buried under praise. And at Botafogo, the right question is being buried under praise for Ziyech.

Botafogo's problem is the problem of a whole football culture, not of one individual. A 33-year-old European star choosing Brazil is a signal of the league's rising commercial power. But it is also a signal of a recruitment model built on media value more than sporting value. A big name sells shirts, draws crowds, generates articles. It does not automatically produce strikers who can score, intelligent runners, or a coherent attacking structure.

And this is something ordinary fans — the ones who stay up late to watch — understand better than any sporting director. They know one good player does not make a good team. They know applause for an individual can drown out the groan of a collective. The stadium may be empty, but I still hear the hearts of thousands of fans beating as one — and that heartbeat is beating with anxiety.

The contrarian angle: where I might be wrong

Now comes the most honest part of this piece. I might be wrong. And I must say so clearly, because someone who only provokes without self-questioning is just a loud clown.

First, the sample is too small. 125 minutes, one start. I am building an argument about a project's fragility on the basis of a single match. That is a genuine weakness. If Ziyech scores three goals in the next three games, my whole "player of moments, not of systems" argument will shake badly. A great player can create his own system through sheer gravity — lifting those around him. That has happened many times in history.

Second, the praise for Ziyech may be a fact, not a media performance. I have hinted the press is embellishing. But there is another possibility: Ziyech genuinely played so well that no one could avoid praising him. If so, the defeat is a different story — not the story of Ziyech's fragility, but the story of the impotence of those around him.

Third, I may be too harsh on a team that lost a match it did not play badly. Vasco is a traditional opponent, not a bottom club. Losing to them 2-1 at home hurts, but it is not a catastrophe. Calling it a "structural illness" may be the overreaction of a 65-year-old woman too used to seeing bad signs everywhere.

And fourth — most importantly — I am judging from a geographical and cultural distance. I was born in Vietnam, live in South Korea, and am writing about a Brazilian club. I am not in the dressing room. I do not hear the conversations. I only have what the press gives me, and I know too well that the press shows only the tip of the iceberg. Men may look down on me, but they cannot look down on my question — and the question here is: am I seeing a crack, or only the shadow of my own doubt?

What to watch

This is what I will watch, and I say it in advance so you can verify it.

Next up, Botafogo travel to Coritiba. It is a difficult trip — a hostile away ground, an uncomfortable opponent. If Botafogo fall again, and if the play still depends on Ziyech's moments and set pieces, then the "broken recruitment" story will no longer be the opinion of a picky writer. It will become the story of an entire board.

I am not saying Ziyech will fail. I am saying something else: a bright star in a dark room does not light the room — it only makes the surrounding darkness clearer.

And if, over the next three to five matches, Botafogo still cannot create chances from open play, people will start asking a different question, one that the praise for Ziyech currently hides: not "is Ziyech good enough?" but "why does a club buy a pen when the whole page is being torn apart?"

At 65, I am still sitting here, staying up late, waiting for the answer. Not because I enjoy watching people fail. But because I believe football — this beautiful game — deserves to be looked at squarely, even when the truth lies in a match no one wants to remember.