Yahoo News Xherdan Shaqiri’s life story in his own words from controversial celebration to stunning Euro 2024 goal
Xherdan Shaqiri’s life journey to football's biggest stages varies from a spell as a vacuum cleaning assistant to a player who has commanded huge transfer fees.
But the key moment in his back story that will always shape him came when he was a four-year-old leaving Kosovo for a new life near Basel, Switzerland shortly before war broke out. It was less than 30 years ago.
A lot has followed from Bayern Munich to Inter Milan, Stoke City to Liverpool and on to Chicago Fire in MLS but the forward has had a special connection with international football - and strongly identifying with two countries; embracing his roots and the place that embraced him and his family. That can cause emotions to run high when Switzerland take on Serbia, perhaps especially if you score a last minute winner at the World Cup.
He has now become the first European to score in the six most recent major tournaments, from World Cup 2014 to Euro 2024, during a decade playing on football's biggest stages.
Complicated? Shaqiri covered his life in an extensive blog for the Players Tribune.
How the Shaqiris started a new life in Switzerland
My family had left Kosovo before the war broke out, when I was four years old, and they tried to make a life in Switzerland with me and my two brothers. It was not easy.
My father didn’t speak Swiss German, so he had to start out washing dishes in a restaurant. He eventually got a job working construction on roads. My mother worked as a cleaner in office buildings in the city. I was her vacuum helper, and my brothers cleaned the windows.
Switzerland is very expensive for anyone, but it was extra difficult for my parents because they were sending a lot of money back home to our family members who were still in Kosovo.
At first, we could fly back to see them every year.
But when the war started it became impossible to go back, and things were very difficult for my family members who were stuck there. My uncle’s house was burned to the ground, and there was a lot of suffering.
My father would send as much money back as he could, so we never had any extra spending money when I was growing up, except for maybe one thing on birthdays.
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Love for football meant a World Cup haircut
Ronaldo was my idol. The original Ronaldo. The way he played, it was like magic to me.
During the 1998 World Cup final, when he was injured and Brazil lost to France, I was crying and crying because I was just so sad for him. My seventh birthday was three months after the World Cup, and I kept saying to my mother every day for the whole three months, “All I want for my birthday is the yellow Ronaldo jersey. Please, just get me that jersey.”
So my birthday comes, and my mum has only one box for me. I open it, and it’s the yellow Ronaldo jersey. Only it’s one of those fake ones you buy down at the market. I don’t even think it had a badge on it. It was just some yellow shirt with a green number nine. My parents didn’t have the money to buy a real one, but it didn’t matter to me. It was like the happiest day of my life. I wore it every day for like 10 days, and I even had these yellow shorts that I’d wear with it.
I was pretty much the only immigrant kid in my school, and I don’t think the Swiss kids understood why I was so obsessed with football.
In Switzerland, football is just a sport. It’s not life like it is in other places.
I remember, four years later, when Ronaldo showed up at the 2002 World Cup with that triangle haircut, I went to the hairdresser and said, “Give me the Ronaldo haircut.”
But I had curly blonde hair at the time so it was just crazy. I showed up to school and all the kids were looking at me like, ‘What happened with this guy? What has he done?’
I didn’t care. I was just being me.
How he learned his skills in the rough part of town
My school was in the nice part of town, but my house was just a five-minute walk from the really bad part of town and that’s where the really good football was. My mother would beg me not to go, but I would walk there every day after school to play.
I know people think Switzerland is all really nice, and most of it is, but in this park, it was crazy.
All the teams were like the United Nations. You had Turkish, Africans, Serbians, Albanians, everything. And it wasn’t just football — everybody would be hanging out there, so you had people there blasting German hip-hop, you had kids freestyle rapping, you had girls just walking straight through the pitch while a game was going on.
The football was real football. Like, you would see guys get punched all the time. I never got punched, because I would keep my mouth shut, always. But playing in that park really helped me because I was a small kid, and I learned how to play with men who were definitely not joking around.
And he represents that rough part of town...
My parents have been proud to see me playing at the World Cup, because they came to Switzerland with nothing and they worked so hard to try to make a good life for their kids.
I think the media often misunderstands my feelings for Switzerland. I feel that I have two homes. It’s that simple. Switzerland gave my family everything, and I try to give everything for the national team.
But whenever I go to Kosovo, I immediately have the feeling of home, too. It is not something logical. It is just a feeling that I have in my gut.
In 2012, when we played against Albania, I put the flags of Switzerland, Albania and Kosovo on my boots, and some of the Swiss newspapers were saying all kinds of negative things about it. I was criticized for it, but it’s crazy to me that some people feel this way because it’s simply my identity.
The great thing about Switzerland is that the country has been very welcoming to people who come from war and poverty who are looking for a good life.
Switzerland has lakes and mountains and all that stuff. But Switzerland also has the park I played in with the Turks, the Serbs, the Albanians, the Africans, and the girls and the German rappers. Switzerland is for everyone.
At the 2018 World Cup, I have the flags of both Switzerland and Kosovo on my boots. Not because of politics or anything like that. But because the flags tell the story of my life.
The celebration controversy
Shaqiri celebrated his winner against Serbia with a gesture that seemed to imitate the eagle on the Albania flag. Granit Xhaka also did something similar after he had scored.
Serbia refuses to recognise the independence of its former province Kosovo, whose 1.8m people are mostly ethnic Albanians, which broke away in 2008, and the two apart when making draws for international competitions.
"In football, you have always emotions," said Shaqiri at the time. "You can see what I did, and it's just emotion, and I'm just happy to have scored the goal. I did it, and we don't have to speak about this."
Switzerland defence, civil protection and sports minister Guy Parmelin said: "Anyone who experience the electric atmosphere of the game can appreciate more the performance of our national team and can understand the emotions which overcome a player."
In the end Shaqiri was fined 10,000 Swiss Francs and not suspended by Fifa's disciplinary committee.
Leaving Stoke that summer
We won't cover too much of Shaqiri's club career here but he spent three seasons at Stoke from 2015, breaking the club's transfer record when he signed for £12m from Inter, starring in a side that produced some of the best football seen by a Stoke team, scoring some incredible goals but then slipping to relegation from the Premier League. He gave a damning interview during that 2017/18 season when he said that he couldn't be expected to make a difference in such a poor side.
He moved onto Liverpool, where he won the Champions League and Premier League.
"Shaq is a great kid in as much as he's a talented boy and he wants to do well," said Mark Hughes.
"His ability on free-kicks and set plays everybody has seen in recent times.
"At times I think at Stoke, the onus and responsibility was obviously on him to win us games. That was more difficult on occasions for Stoke.
"At times I think that responsibility was something that he wasn't prepared to take on.
"I think he enjoys being at top clubs, he's been at Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Liverpool, but he seems to acquire a similar role.
"He seems quite comfortable in that role of just playing a couple of games and then going out of the team. That demand of having to play well week in, week out is something that he doesn't enjoy."
The goals at World Cups and Euros
A super Shaqiri goal on Wednesday night earned Switzerland a draw with Scotland to secure qualification to Euro 2024's knock-out stages - and an individual feat for the player himself.
Shaqiri beat Cristiano Ronaldo to become the first European to score in each of the last six major tournaments when he seized on a loose back pass from Anthony Ralston and bent a shot from just outside the box past fellow former Stoke player Angus Gunn.
It means he has scored in the last three World Cups and now three European Championships too. The 32-year-old, who plays for Chicago Fire these days, is also apparently the first player to score in a European Championship match while playing for a team based in North or South America.
He scored a hat-trick against Honduras at the 2014 World Cup, a brilliant scissor kick against Poland at Euro 2016 while on Stoke's books, a dramatic and emphatically-celebrated winner against Serbia at the 2018 World Cup, three times at Euro 2020 - two against Turkey and in a quarter-final against Spain - and another against Serbia at the 2022 World Cup.
