Xherdan Shaqiri is a guest on the football talk show Heimspiel. The 33-year-old Basel professional talks about his time at FC Bayern.
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- Xherdan Shaqiri is a guest on the football talk show Heimspiel and talks about his time at FC Bayern, among other things.
- The 125-time national team player explains how special it was to play for a world club with big stars.
- Shaqiri describes his two and a half years in Munich as "very nice".
Shaqiri went through the junior section at FC Basel and joined the professional squad as a 17-year-old in the summer of 2009. The precocious teenager subsequently developed into a high-flyer. Shaqiri immediately became a regular player at FCB, winning the championship three times and the cup once, and also regularly performed well in FCB's Champions League campaigns. He has also earned a permanent place in the national team.
Former FCB fitness coach Marco Walker sums up: "He delivered, achieved, learned and performed for us for two and a half seasons." Then, in 2012, the big FCB called. "Of course we thought he could do it," says Walker.
"When you're only 20 years old and FC Bayern comes knocking, it's a very special feeling. It was clear to me that I really wanted to go to FC Bayern because I knew what a club, a world club and a brand it is - Bayern is still the best team in the world for me, together with Real Madrid," Shaqiri said in the football talk Heimspiel and added: "When you really see the things there, even as a player, then you know what you're talking about."
Bayern paid just under twelve million euros for the promising talent. "I actually left at a bad moment," Shaqiri notes. The reason? Bayern had just lost the Champions League final 'dahoam' in Munich.
Cabin packed with world stars
His team-mates are now called Robben, Ribéry, Lewandowski, Müller, Kroos, Lahm or Neuer instead of Frei, Huggel or Streller. "When you come from a small league and then walk into this dressing room and see the big names, it's obviously very special at first," says Shaqiri.
But of course he went there with self-confidence. "I also wanted to show myself and not hide," he says. He was then able to learn a lot from the big names, Shaqiri reveals - especially from Franck Ribéry: "I learned a lot from him. Not just as a person, but also as a footballer. I was able to learn so much from him." Shaqiri won the treble with Bayern in his very first year.
The midfielder played a total of 81 competitive matches for Munich (17 goals and 19 assists), but only made sporadic appearances towards the end and moved to Inter Milan in the summer of 2015 at the age of 23.
Nevertheless, he does not regret the big move from Basel to FC Bayern. After all, an opportunity like this probably only comes once in a lifetime. "If I hadn't made it into the first team at FC Basel back then, I might have ended up somewhere like GC or something," Shaqiri sums up. "Then I might have made my way, but things might have turned out differently than they have now."
Shaq looks back positively on his time in Munich. "I'm very proud of what we've achieved with FC Bayern in these two and a half years. It's something incredible and we're still talking about the best team of all time."
