Xherdan Shaqiri: The left-field summer signing becoming Liverpool’s undroppable man

He is under no illusions as to the reception he will face, but Xherdan Shaqiri is ready to step out in front of Red Star Belgrade’s unforgiving supporters.

There would have been about two dozen Red Star fans, who defied a Uefa ban on away travel, at Anfield on Wednesday night to watch Shaqiri deliver a performance his manager, Jurgen Klopp, remarked was laced with touches of genius.

They still managed to boo Shaqiri, the son of Kosovan refugees whom the Serbs will not easily forgive for what they saw as nakedly political gestures when he scored for his adoptive country, Switzerland, against them in the World Cup.

Next month, there will be 55,000 in the stadium they call the Marakana and most will be ready to howl Shaqiri down. In the words of Red Star’s sporting director, Zvezdan Terzic: “Shaqiri will be under unbelievable psychological pressure because he will know where he’s going. He knows Red Star is the symbol of Serbia and he will be playing in the Marakana.”

Handling the pressure

In the wake of Liverpool’s 4-0 victory over Red Star that sent them to the top of Group C with three games remaining, Shaqiri was sanguine about the trip. “I have seen the articles in the paper but I don’t really care what people think,” he said. “I will just go there. I can handle this no problem.”

At the start of the season, how Shaqiri would handle playing for Liverpool seemed an altogether deeper question. He had been a major player in a Stoke side that had been relegated.

Charlie Adam, a footballer who does not idly criticise team-mates, thought that while Shaqiri’s contributions at Stoke were sometimes breath-taking, “I felt tracking back and what we needed for the team in a relegation battle just wasn’t there.”

You could add that Shaqiri’s other big moves had not worked out. He had not impressed Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich, who blocked a move to Liverpool in the summer of 2014 and then sold him to Inter Milan.

Proud of his contribution

Shaqiri hated Inter, remarking that the diet, the performance analysis and the training methods were worse than what was on offer at Stoke. Adam, whose own move to Anfield from Blackpool seven years ago was as left-field as Shaqiri’s, thought the lack of regular football at Liverpool would frustrate him.

It was only last Saturday, in the bitty 1-0 win at Huddersfield, that Shaqiri completed his first full Premier League game in a Liverpool shirt. “Sometimes it’s not simple because the coach [Klopp] changes a few things,” he said. “You can see on the pitch that there’s a lot of creativity. We link up very well and I am very proud to have played a game in the Champions League from the start.”

He will certainly play the next one. As he proved for Switzerland in Kaliningrad – where he scored with a boot that displayed a Kosovan flag – and at Anfield on Wednesday night, there is something about playing Serbian teams that inspires Shaqiri. For all sorts of reasons, Liverpool dare not leave him out amid the flares and ferocity of Belgrade.