Zakaria Labyad's Bold Tribute to Memphis Depay at Corinthians

In Montevideo’s heavy night air, with Corinthians staring at a damaging continental defeat, Zakaria Labyad stepped up and did more than salvage a result. He lit a fuse under a contract saga that could define the club’s next few years.

His equaliser against Penarol was vital enough on its own. But it was the celebration that really spoke. Fingers jammed into his ears, Memphis Depay-style, Labyad sent a message that travelled a lot further than the penalty area.

This was not just a tribute. It was a public campaign.

Labyad speaks for the dressing room

When the final whistle went, Labyad headed straight from the pitch to the microphones and made his point crystal clear. The goal, the gesture, the noise around it – all of it circled back to one man and one issue: Depay’s future at Corinthians.

Speaking to ESPN, Labyad did not bother with diplomacy. He laid out exactly what the squad wants.

"Yes, of course [the celebration was a tribute to Memphis].

"It's very important for the club to take the next step so that he stays with the club. We've seen what he's done in the last two years with the players, for the club, winning three trophies, helping them avoid relegation. He did a great job for the team, so for the club, for us players, we would love for him to stay at Corinthians."

That is not a casual endorsement. That is the dressing room drawing a line and asking the board to step over it.

Depay has not just added goals and profile since arriving in Brazil. He has altered the culture, raised standards, and carried the team through pressure spells, with silverware and survival as hard evidence. Three trophies. Relegation dodged. A squad that now sees itself differently.

Contract clock ticking

All of that now collides with a simple, brutal fact: his contract runs out at the end of July.

The calendar has turned his situation into a countdown. Corinthians’ directors are locked in negotiations with three external commercial partners, trying to stitch together a package big enough to keep a global name on Brazilian soil. The aim is clear – fully underwrite a lucrative extension without breaking the club’s internal structure.

Time, though, is not on their side. Every week without resolution sharpens the tension. Every performance, every mention from a team-mate, adds public pressure.

Labyad’s intervention only ramps that up. When a senior player uses a continental away game and a crucial goal to lobby for a renewal, the debate is no longer confined to meeting rooms.

A comeback carefully managed

On the pitch, Depay’s season has been anything but straightforward.

A complex physical transition period left him sidelined from late March, a long spell in the treatment room that has disrupted rhythm and continuity. Corinthians have had to relearn how to function without their reference point in attack, while the medical staff pieced him back together step by step.

Just as his reintegration began to gather pace, another bump appeared. A minor muscular strain in his left leg during training on Monday briefly halted his return. Club doctors, though, view it as a routine imbalance for an elite player coming back from extended inactivity, not a serious setback.

So the plan holds: keep him working through the final stages of rehabilitation, manage his workload, and bring him back in time to influence a season that is about to hit a brutal stretch.

A brutal week on the horizon

The fixture list offers no mercy.

Corinthians open a gruelling three-game, seven-day run with a demanding Brasileirao test at home to Atletico-MG on Sunday, May 24. It is the kind of match that exposes any physical or mental fatigue, the sort of contest where a fit Depay can tilt the balance with one moment.

There is barely time to breathe before a decisive Copa Libertadores group stage clash with Platense. Qualification, momentum, money – all on the line in a competition that shapes reputations.

Then comes the trip to face Gremio on May 30, another physically draining assignment layered onto an already punishing schedule.

While the directors juggle spreadsheets and sponsorship calls, Depay’s world is narrower and more brutal: complete the final rehab milestones, hit the required numbers, feel the ball, feel the contact, feel like himself again.

A club at a crossroads

So the scene is set.

On one side, a squad that has publicly nailed its colours to the mast, with Labyad as its spokesman, calling for the Dutch forward to stay. On another, a board racing against a July deadline, trying to assemble the financial muscle to make it happen. In the middle, a recovering star whose body is almost ready and whose influence is not in doubt.

The goals, the trophies, the escape from relegation – they have already written Depay into recent Corinthians history.

The only question now is whether the club will pay to let him write the next chapter.