Read for 5 minutesJun 19, 2026 07:33 AM IST
The commentators were still figuring out the options and their possible positions when one of them, in fact both of them, came together to create a thunderous strike. With the score deadlocked, Switzerland’s frustration was mounting, Ruben Vargas raced down the left and slotted the ball into the box. Not a piercing delivery. Bosnia partially cleared it.
Then the theatrics began. Blur, 20, pirouetted nearly ninety degrees to put the ball into the net. The speed gun reads 79 miles per hour. Roll tape, play again. But all eyes were on the goalscorer: his name, his face, his number, his accent. He was buried under a pile of red shirts. Then he turned and pointed to the back of his shirt. It read: Johan Manzambi. The name echoed around the stands, on every lip. And when he pre-assisted his side’s second and scored his third, it reverberated again after turning a bland first-half performance into a memorable performance for his team and his jubilant fans.
His second goal was less theatrical but more technically achievable. Receiving a cut-back from his idol Granit Xhaka, he opened up his body and swept the ball in with a crisp first-time finish. Yet he was not a target-man but a central midfielder, with nimble feet and a face that never stopped smiling. His poise belied his age. When he scored his first goal, he was just seconds into the greatest day of his life, and the youngest debutant was a substitute who scored a brace.
There was something beyond the goals. Come forward and inject not just peace but hope, not just to get the ball rolling but to move forward, not just to get it but to want it, to enjoy it. Between his goals, he was moving through the shadows, occupying space and progressing with the ball almost invisibly.
Johan Manzambi v Bosnia pic.twitter.com/o5pc3PSfdQ
— C (@zckza_) 18 June 2026
He didn’t seem too excited or emotional in the post-match chat. “I wasn’t nervous, but I was thinking about how I can make an impact, how I can follow the coach’s instructions. I didn’t think about scoring goals,” he said. After the chat, he took the phone of an audience and took a selfie.
Growing up in Geneva, he didn’t want to be a striker or a midfielder, but a goalkeeper. In the backyard, playing with his father and brother, he was content to kick and push the ball away. “I was very young, I grew up very late. I went through a phase where it was a bit difficult for me, when I didn’t believe in myself,” he told Bundesliga.com.
But his father and brother saw that his real gift was not in his hands, but in his feet. His father emigrated from the Congo during internal turmoil at the turn of the century and married an Angolan woman fleeing persecution. Manzambi was born in Geneva. His father introduced him to football early, hoping that his son would fulfill a dream he would never be able to. Manzambi was barely four years old when he enrolled at local club Servette Geneva.
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He didn’t take it seriously until an unexpected increase changed his thinking. “Maybe I was a late bloomer. I was getting taller every day,” he said. He is now exactly six feet tall.
He never missed a game but was not particularly favourite. “I don’t really have a role model. But I often watch Messi play. You can still learn a lot from him,” he told SC Freiburg’s website. He was deployed as a box-to-box midfielder at Freiburg. “A bit like the Yaya Tour,” he would say.
Like the Ivorian, he can clearly switch between different positions. “Basically I’m a box-to-box midfielder, but I think I can play on the wing and as a playmaker,” he told Bundesliga. Against Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was used as an attacking midfielder just behind the forward line. The heat map, however, looked like center-forwards. “He is so good in different positions that we are still trying to figure out his best. He has such an incredible hunger to score goals that I have rarely seen,” manager Murat Yakin said before the tournament. He called it a “secret weapon”.
But it wasn’t a complete secret. European clubs have been scouting him for two years, with seven goals and several assists last season. After this brace, it wouldn’t be a shock if a top club lured him away from the comforts of Freiburg. It won’t be a secret for long.