Good Player Guide #16 – Granit Xhaka

Granit Xhaka
(FC Basel / Switzerland)

Granit Xhaka’s mother was confident, but not even she could expect to be proven right so quickly. “Granit will play for Switzerland in the future,” she told the Swiss media back in 2009.

Mother Xhaka was addressing an issue that arose soon after Switzerland’s Under-17 World Cup 2009 win in Nigeria, after officials from Albania had made tentative telephone enquiries wondering if young Granit, of Kosovo-Albanian descent, might be interested in representing his family’s country of origin.

The story caused a mini-ripple in Switzerland. Many players from the Schweizer Nati’s World Cup winning youth side are of foreign extraction, and with precocious success piquing the interest of national associations looking to steal in on a hot prospect or two, it led Switzerland to confront – or at least discuss – the subject of national identity.

Leaving politics and identity to one side for a moment, what few might have predicted was that Granit Xhaka’s mother’s prophecy would be fulfilled quite so quickly. On the 4th June 2011, just eighteen months after a proud mother’s confident pronouncement, Granit Xhaka lined up at Wembley Stadium to sing the Swiss national anthem as a full international for the first time.

At just 18, Xhaka’s rise to international football, at an age when most are happy just to be able to legally order a pint of beer, is impressive. More impressive still is the immense talent he has shown to reach the level he has so quickly.

A World Cup winner at youth level, a regular at U-17, U-19 and U-21 level, increasingly a regular at club level for FC Basel, a Swiss Super League title winner and now a full senior international, Xhaka’s star is burning brightly and shooting high into the sky.

At Basel, sensible attempts to harness this prodigious talent have been smashed to pieces by the power of Xhaka’s potential. “I wanted to ease him into the team bit by bit,” said his coach Thorsten Fink last July. Xhaka’s reply? A 25-yard piledriver four minutes into his debut, after coming on in the dying moments of a Champions League qualifier in Hungary against Debrecen. By the time the 2010-11 Swiss season came to a close Xhaka was a first team regular.

A central midfielder who can play both further forward and in a deeper withdrawn role, Granit Xhaka is a wonderfully gifted prospect. Primarily left-footed, he has good vision and awareness, an encouraging passing range and impressive technique. His positional play could use some improvement (well, he is only 18), but what delights, and bodes well for the future, is the manner in which he gets his head up before receiving the ball and looks to find players in space – already aware of the picture around him before the ball arrives at his feet.

As well as all this, Xhaka – whose older brother Taulant also plays for Basle – also packs a mean shot. “Granit’s weapon is his shot,” Fink commented after the Debrecen game and though he has only scored one other goal in his embryonic career to date, the Xhak attack looks like becoming another addition to an already powerful arsenal.

Of Kosovan descent, Granit Xhaka comes from a modest background and, still unblemished by fame or the superstardom to which his footballing talents could well propel him, is a character of some humility. His father Ragip worked as a gardener and his mother a baker after the family moved to Switzerland. “Both work very hard,” Xhaka said in a diary kept during the U-17 World Cup, “but they always made time to come and see us play.”

He speaks four languages although his favourite subject is maths, is extremely close to his brother, who he describes as a “role model”, and a bad injury at U-16 level taught him an important lesson early on in life: the value of education.

“Education is very important to me because when I was an U-16 I tore my cruciate ligament and was out for half a year,” said Xhaka. “I learned that it can all go very quickly in football. And if you don’t have football, you need an education. I don’t want to end up on the streets because I can’t do anything but play football.”

From Under-17 duty in Nigeria to starting in a European Championship qualifier against England at Wembley, Xhaka’s rapid emergence is as much a surprise to him as anybody else. “Until two days ago I had never had to give an autograph,” he commented at his home (he still lives with his parents) after returning from the U-17 World Cup win, “now I’m getting text messages with congratulations from Ottmar Hitzfeld!”

Indeed, Switzerland coach Hitzfeld has been keeping a close eye on the country’s new generation. With both Marco Streller and Alexander Frei recently retiring from international football, former Bayern Munich coach Hitzfeld is turning towards youth to provide the national side with fresh impetus.

For the game against England Hitzfeld called up the likes of Innocent Emeghara (22) and Admir Mehmedi (20), not to mention Xherdan Shaqiri (19) and Granit Xhaka – all members of Switzerland’s Under-21 2011 European Championship squad – while leaving veteran star Hakan Yakin out in the cold.

This is the dawn of a new age of optimism for Swiss football. Granit Xhaka is very much a part of it.

(photo credit: Getty)

FC Basle, Good Player Guide, Granit Xhaka, Switzerland, Under-17 World Cup