Liverpool FC Players from the Past: Xherdan Shaqiri
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Xherdan Shaqiri was one of several players who Liverpool cherry-picked from relegated clubs in the early years of Jurgen Klopp’s Anfield reign.Having signed Gini Wijnaldum from Newcastle in 2016 and Andy Robertson from Hull a year later, the trend continued when the Reds landed the Swiss playmaker from Stoke in the summer of 2018 for just £13.5m.The maverick talent immediately endeared himself to Kopites by scoring an outrageous overhead kick in his first pre-season game for LFC against Manchester United, who he’d go on to terrorise again a few months later.To bet on Liverpool matches in Switzerland – who Shaqiri represented on the international stage – check out the latest odds from Mysportwetten.de!Shaqiri was involved in all three of Liverpool’s goals on his first official start for the club against Southampton in September 2018, with his first goal coming in a win over Cardiff the following month.Midway through that season, the Reds recorded a long-overdue league win over Man United, and the final score of 3-1 belied the Merseysiders’ total dominance that evening. The Switzerland star came off the bench to net two of those goals, a contribution for which he’ll always be remembered fondly.The winger’s minutes under Klopp were limited due to the consistent brilliance of the legendary forward line of Mo Salah, Bobby Firmino and Sadio Mane, although he did play the entirety of what was probably the most memorable fixture of the entire 2018/19 campaign.With the Egyptian King unavailable due to injury, Shaqiri came in to start the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona, when the Reds overturned a 3-0 deficit from the previous week to triumph 4-0 at a raucous Anfield.
Our number 23 put in the cross from which Wijnaldum headed the third goal that night.He didn’t feature in the final against Tottenham Hotspur and was again reliant on sporadic minutes in the 2019/20 season, although his knack for coming good in big games was evidenced once more by scoring in a 5-2 thrashing of Everton in December 2019.He ended that campaign with a Premier League winner’s medal, even if his role was peripheral, and stayed on as backup to Salah for the following campaign.He continued to play the role of faithful backup, with occasional highlights coming with a goal a Carabao Cup thrashing of Lincoln and a brilliant assist for the Egyptian in a top-flight win away to West Ham.After three years of feeding off scraps at Liverpool, though, Shaqiri eventually moved on to Lyon in the summer of 2021 for less than half of what the Reds paid for him.He was unfortunate in a sense to be at the club at the same time as the legendary Salah, but he’ll always be associated with one of the greatest teams in LFC history during the peak of the Klopp era.