Ziyech was born in Dronten, Flevoland, the youngest sibling of nine children (five boys and four girls) of Moroccan immigrants from Tafoughalt, a Berber village of the warrior tribal confederation of Aït Iznassen located near Berkane in northeastern Morocco. Ziyech grew up in the southern part of Dronten. His two older brothers Faouzi and Hicham were born in Berkane. Like many Moroccans between the 1960s and 1990s, a large number of people from northern Morocco emigrated to Belgium and the Netherlands in search of work and better living conditions. This was also the case for Hakim Ziyech's father who left Morocco in 1967 with his two sons Faouzi and Hicham for the Netherlands where he worked in a metal factory. Ziyech's mother joined her husband in the Netherlands at the age of eighteen and stayed at home and took care of the children in Dronten. Hakim has double nationality: Dutch and Moroccan. With his brothers and his friends from the neighborhood, Ziyech spent hours playing football on the Cruyff Court esplanade opposite his home. Learning his first skill moves there, football quickly became a passion. During his childhood, Ziyech regularly watched Ajax stars on television such as Wesley Sneijder, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Rafael van der Vaart. "There were a few players I loved watching, like Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane ...players of that caliber. I watched them a lot when I was little. I remember when I was ten years old, I watched their videos on YouTube every day", he said in an interview with UEFA in 2019.
