Xherdan Shaqiri kicks off TYAC’s 32 to Watch in Brazil list.
Neil W. Blackmon
Four years ago, we at TYAC ran a series of stories counting down “32 Players to Watch” at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The countdown is back by popular demand.
For the unfamiliar, this is not a Bleacher Report style countdown. Those have their value and they are fun, but this countdown is a bit different. Here’s how: each player selected is paired with an American-based professional athlete we believe to be their sporting “soulmate.” For an example of what this looks like, here’s a link to the piece Jon Levy wrote in 2010 about Carlos Tevez.
For the TYAC 2014 FIFA World Cup 32 Players to Watch countdown, there’s one more catch: no player selected in 2010 can be selected again in 2014. This includes American-based soulmates. So you won’t see Leo Messi, Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez, Tim Howard and many others on this year’s list. Nor will you see soulmates like Kobe Bryant, Martin Brodeur, Alex Ovechkin or Joe Mauer. Everyone on this list will be different than last time around. Just like this World Cup promises a different, but still compelling story from the one that played out in South Africa.
So without further Freddy Adu, let’s kick this thing off, shall we?
# 32 Xherdan Shaqiri
Position: Midfielder (Winger)
Country: Switzerland
Club Team: Bayern Munich
American-Based Professional Athlete “Soulmate”:Patrick Kane, RW, Chicago Blackhawks
Kosovo fans see Shaqiri and wonder what might have been. And perhaps, what will be…
One month ago, with little fanfare but plenty of passion, Kosovo and Haiti played a friendly in Mitrovica. It was the first FIFA-sanctioned friendly for the fledgling nation of Kosovo. The match ended in a draw, but as is often the case in these sorts of things, the scoreline was the last thing that mattered. Most critically, fifteen years after NATO entered Kosovo in an effort to halt Serbian ethnic cleansing, the little nation took a huge step towards playing soccer as a fully-recognized member of FIFA and UEFA. Although Kosovo has already been recognized by various international sporting bodies in other sports, the road to FIFA recognition has been arduous. Serbia opposes the idea so strongly that they wrote a letter to FIFA and UEFA pleading that the game be cancelled. Michel Platini went all Platini, changing like the wind, praising the game afterwards as a measure of Kosovo’s will to break its perennial isolation but opposing the idea to begin with. Ultimately, it was Sepp Blatter who gave the go-ahead– with plenty of Blatter-like caveats: no anthems could be played, no flags flown, no national symbols worn, no matches against former Yugoslav republics, and only, for now, “non-competitive” friendlies. Kosovo played anyway, despite the stipulations, and primarily, it did so because many within Kosovo feel football can assist with political reconciliation.
Shaqiri and Switzerland earned a seed for 2014.
It’s a wonderful story, and it deserves to be told. It especially deserves to be told when we introduce Player # 32 in our 2014 Players to Watch countdown, Bayern Munich’s Xherdan Shaqiri. Shaqiri, you see, was born in Yugoslavia, and when, as an infant, the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo began, his parents fled with him and his three brothers and sisters to Switzerland. And so it was that when Kosovo football fans found out that FIFA had given them the go-ahead on friendlies, Shaqiri’s name was among the first to come up. The war not only resulted in the murder of innocents numbered conservatively in the hundreds of thousands, it also created countless more refugee stories– stories like that of Shaqiri’s family. Among those refugee stories, Kosovo lost a generation of remarkable footballing talent. Shaqiri, Napoli’s Valon Behrami, Manchester United winger Adnan Januzaj and Granit Xhaka of Borussia Monchengladbach are just a few of the names lost to the conflict and the nation’s that took those players’ families in. Since earning the right to play, Kosovo’s brand new FA has promised not to reach out to players already committed to other countries. But that promise was conditional: should FIFA allow them to join on a competitive basis, the door will be left opened. For now, Kosovo fans can dream.
And why do they dream about Shaqiri? And why should you keep your eye on him as he plays for his adopted homeland of Switzerland in Brazil? It’s quite simple, really. He’s a prodigious talent, fast, strong and physically imposing, magic with the ball at his feet and perhaps more so on free kicks. With all due respect to his Swiss teammates, he’s the largest difference-maker between a Swiss team that was good enough on a great day to beat Spain (employing the Bob Bradley gameplan) but bad enough to struggle to score goals in South Africa, and the current incarnation of Switzerland, a team so dominant this World Cup cycle it garnered a coveted seed in Brazil.
Here’s just a sampling of what he’s done for country:
For his club, Bayern Munich, the story is somewhat more complicated. Shaqiri is at a point in his stage where he’s still a developing talent. At most clubs in the world– maybe at all but two or three- his type of skill on the ball and from set pieces would allow him to play his way through growing pains: he can get lost defensively at times, he’s prone to disappearance for swaths of the match, his ambitious distributions are brilliant and he reads the game well but he forces things from time to time. At Munich, this means he plays sparingly and irons things out in training. This has frustrated Shaqiri, who as recently as last month made it known he was tired of sitting under Pep Guardiola and was willing to listen to a bevy of Barclay’s Premier League suitors later this summer. Whether the battle for playing time creates additional motivation for Shaqiri this summer remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the Swiss can’t play like a seeded team and make a deep World Cup run if Shaqiri isn’t pulling the strings in attack.
Patrick Kane went from “video game good” to Conn Smythe good. Shaqiri hopes that happens for him this summer.
Primarily a left-winger, Shaqiri pressures opposing defenses with both his pace and his magical left foot. It’s not underselling it to suggest he’s more creative than the remainder of his midfield mates combined– ask any England fan who watched the youngster play against England in EURO qualification in 2010 about this if you think it farcical. Or ask Manchester United fans, who Shaqiri helped relegate to the Europa league while playing with Basel in Champions League play in 2011. In that match, Shaqiri started on the left but did something he’ll do a great deal for country this summer– drifting centrally and sometimes over to the right side to cause confusion and overload the opposing defense. In one crucial moment, Shaqiri actually found himself on the same flank as teammate Fabian Frei, but accepted the ball anyway, and delivered a tremendous cross that gave Basel an early goal. For more on that match, check out the Zonal Marking write-up here. The Swiss demand that Shaqiri do the creating– the good news is that at every level for country, from the U-17’s to the senior team, Shaqiri has embraced that role.
The questions now are about consistency. Guardiola insists Shaqiri would play more if he were more consistent. Shaqiri is, in a sense, “video game” good, as anyone whose ever sent a scout out in Football Manager and received the following report will attest: “Your scout believes Xherdan Shaqiri must be signed at all costs. He is twice the player as…” Ditto anyone who has played FIFA for a significant length of time, and watched the player rating of the young Swiss international skyrocket nearly as fast as his transfer value. Shaqiri is so “video game good” you can have Swingers “Jeremy Roenick moments:”
And that leads us to his soulmate, American and Chicago Blackhawks winger Patrick Kane. Like Shaqiri, Kane is a special player with the puck. He’s fast. He’s powerful. And while he plays on the right, his country needs him in the middle, as anyone whose watched US hockey the past two Olympic games understands. Kane uses his special blend of speed, strength and nearly unrivaled skill with the puck to be one of the NHL’s most lethal attacking talents. He’s a better defender than Shaqiri, but given that he’s three years the Swiss winger’s senior, some of that makes sense.
Most important, Kane has matured and learned– sometimes on the fly, and on grand stages, deep in the Stanley Cup Playoffs– how to impact winning when he’s not on the puck. Kane’s improved his forecheck and his movement off the puck, all while remaining a special player, whether as a passer or a scorer, on the puck. Early in his career, Kane, who like Shaqiri made the highest level well-before his 20th birthday, was classically “video game good.” He tallied 51 assists as a rookie– a remarkable number- but had a +/- of -5 and led the Blackhawks frontline in penalty minutes. Harnessing his massive talents for the betterment of the team was a challenge for Kane. And it’s what he’s fully embraced, to the tune of two Stanley Cup championships, and most recently, a Conn Smythe Award for being the NHL’s Most Valuable Player in the postseason.
The thinking here is that if Switzerland is to make a special run, Shaqiri will need to channel some Conn Smythe himself. One thing is certain. It will be special and fun to watch, whether you’re in Brazil, the US, Switzerland or Kosovo.