Shaqiri is not yet the FCB savior

It’s as if only boring people were present at the party of the year. On Saturday evening, St. Jakob Park is sold out with 36,000 spectators, people are excited – but instead of fun and entertainment, the Basel partygoers are in for a sobering evening with a disappointing host, FC Basel. FC Zurich prove to be a rude guest, winning 2-0 without having to push any boundaries.

Everything would have been ready for a glittering red and blue ball night. Before the match, FCB record player Fabian Frei will be bid farewell on the pitch after 543 games for Basel and his move to FC Winterthur. He is surrounded by other legends of the club – Karl Odermatt, Valentin Stocker and Marco Streller – and addresses a few emotional words to the audience. For the first time in 4504 days, another Basel football icon will be in the starting line-up – in 2012, Xherdan Shaqiri said goodbye with the championship title, and after more than twelve years abroad he is back home.

It is a strange balancing act between a glorious past and a hopeful future that FC Basel is currently performing with Shaqiri as a key figure. Basically, the signing of the soon-to-be 33-year-old does not fit into the business model of the busy (and sometimes too busy) president David Degen of finding, developing and profitably selling promising talents.

Doubts about Shaqiri’s fitness remain

Shaqiri has been welcomed as a savior, and expectations are sometimes absurdly high. This is evident in Basel’s dismal performance against FCZ. FCB is error-prone, unfocused and harmless. Shaqiri also has little success, even when he tries to play the ball forward quickly and directly. After the game, Shaqiri says that it was clear that the FC Basel players still need to get to know each other better. And: “We were clumsy when we conceded goals and were not precise enough in attack.”

It is a precise analysis. This season, Basel have some very exciting footballers in their squad who could move to a top league at some point. It will be a difficult task for coach Fabio Celestini to find the right tactical formation to showcase Shaqiri’s playing strengths – and to conceal his running weaknesses. For some time now, Shaqiri has been questioning his fitness level; his calf hurts and pulls every now and then. At the European Championships in the summer, according to people close to the national team, he was in a miserable physical condition.

But Shaqiri is Shaqiri. At the same European Championship, he scored the most beautiful goal of the entire tournament in his only start against Scotland – and in the quarter-finals he made a strong impression as a substitute against England, almost crowning it with the winning goal shortly before the end of extra time with a cheeky corner kick that hit the crossbar.

As long as Xherdan Shaqiri plays football, he will always be associated with a special longing for magical moments. “My left foot is still there,” he said recently. Regardless of whether his annual salary is 1.7 million francs, 1.2 million or 2 million, Shaqiri is probably the best-paid footballer in the history of the Swiss league. It will therefore not be enough to produce a stroke of genius every now and then or to convert the decisive penalty just before the end, as he did in the cup a week ago at Stade Nyonnais.

Shaqiri’s challenge: be big – and make yourself small

Shaqiri’s liaison with FCB is not yet primarily about goals and value for money, but about the big emotions. But everyday life is approaching inexorably. Against FC Zurich, Basel and their supporters were rudely torn from their dreams for the first time. Shaqiri’s body language may be better than in Nyon, but it will be a challenge for him to prove at the end of his extraordinary career that he is still a great Swiss footballer – and at the same time to belittle himself and put himself at the service of the team.

After the loud elimination of Michael Lang and Fabian Frei, Shaqiri is the dominant identification figure in the relatively creatively assembled Basel team. Especially since captain Taulant Xhaka, who made his 400th appearance for FCB after being substituted against Zurich, hardly plays a role anymore. Romário Baró, one of the newcomers, makes his debut in central midfield against Zurich. The Portuguese takes the catastrophic corner in the first half, which FCZ uses to launch a rapid counterattack and score the first goal by Mounir Chouiar – and he is sent off shortly before the end of the game with his second booking.

That fits with Basel’s weak performance. FCZ, on the other hand, impresses with its disciplined, robust style of play and has the two most striking footballers in its ranks, Cheick Condé and Samuel Ballet. And striker Juan José Perea shows that he can be a goal scorer, and not just because of his fourth goal of the season to make it 2-0. FCZ is unbeaten and in the lead after six games. But boundless euphoria has not yet broken out in the club.

Results. Saturday: Grasshoppers – Servette 2:2 (1:2). St. Gallen – Lucerne 2:3 (2:0). Basel – Zurich 0:2 (0:1). – Sunday: Lausanne-Sport – Yverdon 3:1 (2:0). Sion – Lugano 0:0. Winterthur – Young Boys 1:4 (0:1).

Ranking: 1. Zurich 6/14 (13:5). 2. Lucerne 7/14 (14:9). 3. Lugano 7/14 (12:8). 4. Servette 7/13 (12:15). 5. Sion 7/11 (10:6). 6. St. Gallen 6/10 (12:8). 7. Basel 7/10 (15:8). 8. Lausanne-Sport 7/7 (11:16). 9. Young Boys 7/6 (11:15). 10. Grasshoppers 7/5 (9:13). 11. Yverdon 7/5 (7:13). 12. Winterthur 7/4 (4:14).