Granit Xhaka: An Eagle’s Travails to Prevailing
Prevailing images. The pictures that will always be associated with one person due to their iconic nature. Some have enough and, of those, with enough importance to build a mosaic that paints a canvas as colourful as a painter’s palette. Indelible, synonymous, unforgettable. Which one would this be for Granit Xhaka?
There are so many places to start with in the Swiss born Albanian. The career has been long with events, both good and bad, but so much of it has been well travelled. Perhaps the answer for many would be the picture of the central midfielder using his fingers to construct the Albanian Eagle.
This was against Serbia and the political connotations won’t be lost there. Still, a prevailing image also helpful in exemplifying the personality of the man. Keys, mimicked people speaking, red cards, concessions of penalties, stripped captaincies, almost leaving…The story of Xhaka is a long winding road of a player that was often consigned to a player that might have some talents but not enough to be respected.
Those talents showed up very favourably in Switzerland and Germany. The time in which Basel faced Man Utd then drew 3-3 at Old Trafford and then beat the famed Manchester club at St Jakob Park to qualify over them in the Champions League. Catapulting both him and his fellow ancestral and countryman, Xherdan Shaqiri into acclaim, he got a move to Borussia Monchengladbach. Then onto Arsenal.
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The prevailing pictures became Keys, mimicked people speaking, red cards, concessions of penalties, stripped captaincies, almost leaving…For a long time, Xhaka was a player with a specific position, CM, without not a specified role. Plenty thought he would come in as a controlling, deep lying playmaker when he came on the English shores.
The words of Arsène Wenger conflicted with this idea and confused plenty who saw him in prior years. The Frenchman said he saw his new signing more as a box-to-box midfielder than the natural successor to the red and white DMs prior. As a natural leader, Granit was given the keys to the house as the younger brother, and an abrasive character, as he mimicked people talking about his performance early on in his career when he scored a goal against Hull.
The keys, mimicked people but the red cards, concessions of penalties, stripped captaincy when he almost left would have coloured a pretty underwhelming 5 and a half years in England. Then, a turn of fortune. The DM he was supposed to replace, Mikel Arteta, became the manager and an instant bond was built up.
From then on, Xhaka found form but still littered with some untimely mistakes, such as Burnley away in 2020/21. But still a building of form that led him to the 2022/23 season where the Swiss put together his best season. And it was as that box-to-box player. In fact, you could say that Xhaka’s positioning and off the ball movement is what caused Arsenal to be such a dangerous proposition when they ran up 50 points in the first 19 games.
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Taking care of him was paramount and those that did prospered well. He would regularly make a run through the left half space into the box and because the opposition were so concerned with the attacking threats, they simply forget about him. He ended up with 7 goals and 7 assists in 37 games. He had a combined 15 goals and assists in the previous 4 seasons before that.
A good proxy for looking at a player’s contribution on the ball all over the pitch is through xGBuildup. We know the basics of xG. In an xGChain, the ending xG is attributed to all the players that had a touch in the build-up to the shot. XGBuildup is the same concept but without the players who took the shot or gave the assist to it. It should show you who is the most involved in build-up, hence the name.
Between 2016-22, with Wenger, Emery and Arteta, Xhaka was routinely top of the list of the XGBuildup per 90. In 4 of the 6 seasons, he was top absolutely, even compared to those with small minutes. In another, he was second. In the last, he was third out of those who played substantial minutes. Essentially, Arsenal’s play went through Xhaka.
In 2022/23, he was 5th out of the regular XI. By being less involved, he surprisingly became more important. For a player, who both on and off the pitch has been used to being the main character, not being one actually allowed him the thrive the most he had done in years.
Even despite his successes, Arsenal didn’t win the league that year however, it was the foundations of the team that would eventually do so 3 years later. Still doing so without Xhaka because he would eventually leave. Leaving on the adventure where he would go to really paint the world positively.
In Leverkusen, once again under a Basque former player turned manager. It was Xabi Alonso and he was the centrepiece. Whereas at Arsenal in that last season, he was perhaps the de facto, undercover one at that, but for Die Schwarzoten the team revolved around him. Alongside Exequiel Palacios, he was the metronome for a team that ticked effortlessly to the beat.
He was everything that he was expected to be with a starting deep lying playmaking role, imposing his will on the way in which Leverkusen pushed and pulled their opponent. Whilst before he was the movement for others to find him, he was the one finding the movement ahead of him. Lots of it to find as well.
With the offensive wingbacks mimicking wingers, the wingers drifting into the pockets and the striker stretching the play, it gave him the time and space to really get into the groove. A groove that saw him win the team, which dubs itself Die Werkself (The Factory XI), manufacture their first ever Bundesliga title.
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They had done so unbeaten. They went unbeaten in the German Cup. They almost did in Europa League as well. Unfortunately Atalanta BC stood in their way, in a quite formidable fashion. Despite that, it was still this most incredible achievement and Xhaka was the one steering the ship.
After another season in Germany, he would be called back again to England. Newly promoted Sunderland managed to sell their project enough to ensure that Xhaka would come back. What we saw last season from Xhaka was one combining all the talent he has, all the experience he has garnered and the tactical flexibility that has come from his once unspecified role in the middle of the park.
It may seem like a small thing but anytime I watched a game with the Wearsiders, the former Monchengladbach man would play a pass that would seem simple, yet plenty don’t or have the wherewithal to do. When his back was facing his own goal, he would often bounce the pass straight back to the recipient.
It may seem like a small thing, but it was the appreciation of the opponents around him that forced him into doing that and that pass back would allow the picture to change a bit, through his own positioning or others. Plenty of times before, Xhaka would have been caught unawares, perhaps through a lack of proper scanning or just lacking the capacity of appreciating the pace of the press coming towards him.
Whatever it was, it was why he did not look as good as a deeper midfielder. Yet, with Sunderland, he was looking more than at home. At almost 10 years on from when he first came, he has a better handle of playing as the deepest midfield despite losing a lot of his running capacity and stamina.
The red cards, where it would be a rush of blood in a tackle or a lost head in altercation with the opposing number, the concession of penalties, such as the tackle in the box against Heung-Min Son in the North London Derby, which would put Tottenham 2-0 ahead was the standout image of Xhaka. He was lucky to go without a yellow card, and he was lucky to not have a yellow before that as well. It could have easily been a combination of the worst parts of him.
It is why when he was taken off almost 2 months later, as they were drawing to Palace having given up a two-goal lead, he sauntered off. The boos a month earlier against Villa didn’t help. Because now the Swiss hothead was at the end of his tether, sarcastically applauding and cupping his ears to the fans. After just three months of being the captain, he was stripped of it.
The same thing about the keys and mimicking people speaking is what caused the reds, the penalties, the captaincy furore. They were once the prevailing images of Xhaka. Now? The prevailing images are of him faking an injury in his celebration to only break into a dance as Leverkusen were on the cusp of winning the league.
Or maybe of his TikTok page where he almost exclusively uses modern Afrobeats as his background music, endearing to a very different crowd. Or the sight of him lifting the two trophies above his head. Or the celebration that erupted in the Stadium of Light as Sunderland qualified for Europe for just the second time in their history.
Once again, at the head. As the captain. If he were to saunter off the pitch, applauding and cupping his ears, it would have been met with the adulation he deserves.
“And on this rock, I build my church.”
Prevailing images… but what prevails most is his name. Granit. One might not be surprised if Alonso or Le Bris were to say to Xhaka that he is the rock that they build just not the middle of the park but their whole team. A rock in the sense that he had been hardened by his story as a young man who knew his father was displaced with a genocide.
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A rock in the sense that many would have crumbled under the terrible circumstances and he came through it to be successful. A rock that his teammates can rely upon and managers can build teams upon.
As he comes to what could be his last World Cup, without his long-term mate in Xherdan Shaqiri, he will do so with a much-changed image than the one he entered in at Qatar. In Switzerland, they would have always seen him as the great player. Perhaps this is the lesson of Granit Xhaka, one that I have had to learn myself. The mosaic of prevailing images can be easy to go along with, but it was not a surprise that so many managers saw so much in him for so long.
While there might have been other ideas prevailing of the negative images of Xhaka but that might have just been the trouble he needed to get to the gem he currently presents as. So, the travails of the journey of the Swiss man has prevailed him into a player that is not only well respected but, one to be well regarded. An eagle, indelible in the hearts of many, synonymous with success and unforgettably soaring through the twilight of his career.
By: Elijah Sofoluke / @AliquamScripto
Featured Image: @Juanffrann / James Williamson – AMA