GENEVA (AP) — A prodigal son whose Champions League-winning career stalled in Major League Soccer. A once-dominant club that has not won a league title since 2017.
Xherdan Shaqiri’s revival on leaving Chicago Fire to return to Basel this season — and his spring surge of goals — is leading the Swiss team toward its first league title in eight years.
Shaqiri’s status as talisman at his hometown club he left in 2012 to join Bayern Munich was clear with two impressive goals last weekend in a 4-0 rout at the home of traditional rival Zurich.
“It was a statement,” the 33-year-old captain said of a win that lifted Basel six points clear in what had been a multi-team title race. “Look at the result, there’s nothing more to say.”
Shaqiri’s famous left foot fired a rising shot from a tight angle, that rattled the bar and a post before hitting the net, and he scored again with a flat curling free kick.
Now with 13 goals, Shaqiri is joint top scorer in the Swiss league on a career-best total plus 14 assists in just 28 games.
One more goal when Basel hosts Yverdon on Monday and Shaqiri will tie his tally scored in 2 1/2 years combined in MLS with Chicago Fire.
Not much fun in Chicago
Chicago finished with a losing record in each of Shaqiri’s three seasons there and has failed to make the playoffs since 2017, the last of Basel’s eight-year run as Swiss champion.
That title streak started in Shaqiri’s debut season, 2009-10, which ended with the 18-year-old prospect going to his first World Cup.
He did not score in South Africa in 2010 though did in each of the next three World Cups, and at three European Championships from 2016 to 2024.
A standout strike against Scotland last June was Shaqiri’s only start in five games at Euro 2024 as he became less essential for an impressive Switzerland team, which lost in the quarterfinals against England on penalties.
Shaqiri scored his spot-kick, after entering as a substitute in extra time, in what was his last act for the national team in his 125th game.
He retired from the national team after the tournament and one month later agreed to terminate his Chicago contract in what the club said was “is in the best interest of all parties.”
A return to his boyhood team
Shaqiri soon was back at Basel, which the Kosovo-born kid first joined at age 8 and who he helped win the Swiss league in each of his first three full seasons.
After leaving Basel the first time — to be replaced by a young Mohamed Salah — Shaqiri won a Champions League winners’ medal in his first season with Bayern. He got another in 2019 with Liverpool — as Salah’s teammate — though he did not get off the bench in either final.
Basel last played in the Champions League in 2018 and will enter the qualifying playoffs in August if Shaqiri’s league-leading team can protect a six-point advantage over Servette with six rounds left.
With no more long-haul flights from the United States for national team duty, he has managed his body through the Swiss season that ends with the top half of the 12-team league splitting next week into a championship group.
“We set the pace,” Shaqiri said of a four-game winning streak in which he scored four goals. “Let’s see what the others do.”
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press
