The commentators were still figuring out the substitutes and their likely positions when one of them, in fact both of them, combined to produce a thundering strike. The score deadlocked, Switzerland’s frustrations mounting, Ruben Vargas darted down the left and floated a ball into the box. Not a piercing delivery. Bosnia half-cleared it. Then the theatrics kicked in. A dreadlocked 20-year-old blur pirouetted almost ninety degrees to volley the ball into the net. The speed gun read 79 miles an hour. Roll the tape, play it again. But every eye was on the goalscorer: his name, his face, his number, the pronunciation. 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, played on every lip. And it echoed again when he pre-assisted his team’s second and nailed the third, transforming a bland first-half performance into a memorable one for his team and its joyous fans. His second goal was less theatre but more technically accomplished. Receiving a cut-back from his idol Granit Xhaka, he opened his body and swept the ball with a crisp first-time finish. Yet he was not a target-man but a central midfielder, blessed with nimble feet and a face that never stops smiling. His composure belied his age. When he scored the first goal, he was merely seconds into the greatest day of his life, and the youngest debuting substitute to score a brace. There was something beyond the goals too. To come on and inject not just calmness but hope, not just to circulate the ball but to advance it, not just to have it but to want it, to enjoy it. Between his goals, he glided through the shadows, covering space and progressing with the ball, almost invisibly. Johan Manzambi vs Bosnia pic.twitter.com/o5pc3PSfdQ — C (@zckza_) June 18, 2026 In the post-match chat, he looked neither too excited nor emotional. “I was not nervous, but just thinking how I could make an impact, how I could carry out the coach’s instructions. I didn’t think of scoring,” he said. After the chat, he grabbed a phone from a spectator and took a selfie. Growing up in Geneva, he wanted to be neither a striker nor a midfielder, but a goalkeeper. In the backyard, playing with his father and brother, he was content palming and pushing the ball away. “I was very small, I grew up too late. I went through a phase where it was a bit difficult for me, when I had little confidence in myself,” he told Bundesliga.com. But his father and brother saw that his real gift was with his feet, not his hands. His father had migrated from Congo during the internal turmoil at the turn of the century and married an Angolan woman who had fled persecution. Manzambi was born in Geneva. His father introduced him to football early, hoping his son might realise the dream he never could. Manzambi was barely four when he was enrolled at local club Servette Geneva. ALSO READ | Cristiano Ronaldo at 41: The ball has fallen out of love with himStory continues below this ad He didn’t take it seriously until an unexpected growth spurt 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 had no particular favourite. “I don’t really have a role model. But I often watch Messi’s games. You can still learn a lot from him,” he told SC Freiburg’s website. At Freiburg he was deployed as a box-to-box midfielder. “A bit like Yaya Touré,” he would say. Like the Ivorian, he could put in shifts in markedly different positions. “Fundamentally 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, though, looked like a centre-forward’s. “He is so good in different positions that we are still trying to figure out his best one. He has this incredible hunger to score goals that I have rarely seen,” manager Murat Yakin said before the tournament. He called him a “secret weapon.” But he was not a complete secret. European clubs had been scouting him for two years, with seven goals and as many assists last season. After this brace, it would not be a shock if a top club cajoles him away from the comforts of Freiburg. He would not be a secret much longer.
Swiss star Manzambi: From goalkeeper’s dream to their nightmare
