Xherdan Shaqiri put on a gala performance at St. Jakob-Park on Thursday. The FCB playmaker almost single-handedly led his team to a 3-1 victory over FCSB Bucharest in the Europa League with three goals.
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- Xherdan Shaqiri was involved in all the decisive scenes in the 3-1 Europa League win against FCSB Bucharest. He scored two goals himself and set up one goal.
- With ten goals and nine assists in 20 games, the FCB captain has been directly involved in over half of all Basel's goals this season.
The starting position for the Swiss champions is tricky ahead of the match against Bucharest: After three matchdays, FC Basel are in mid-table at the bottom of the Europa League group stage with three points - 24th place with a goal difference of -1 - and are under pressure to avoid losing touch with the top half of the table.
In the opening phase, Xherdan Shaqiri plays a strong pass deep to Broschinski, but the visitors' goalkeeper Târnovanu comes out to save the ball with his hand from outside the penalty area.
Shaqiri takes the free kick and the ball hits the hand of a Romanian player in the wall. The VAR intervenes and a penalty is awarded. The FCB captain steps up to take the penalty, runs up to it and scores safely with a panenka into the middle - 1:0 for FC Basel in the 19th minute.
Basel subsequently struggled, while Bucharest remained dangerous despite being outnumbered. The home team even conceded the equalizer after 57 minutes. Basel then had great difficulty breaking through the Romanians' bulwark, and the crowd of just under 22,000 in St. Jakob-Park began to get restless.
Then came their savior in the form of Shaqiri: Cisse hit the post from around 18 meters, the 34-year-old reacted the quickest and shot Basel back into the lead with a no-look clearance.
Shortly before the end, the Beebbi secured victory: Shaqiri served Salah perfectly and the Moroccan hammered the ball powerfully into the top right-hand corner. Thanks to Shaq's magic, Basel secured their second win in the Europa League phase and are back on course for the play-offs.
Strong numbers
Shaqiri's statistics are impressive. He took nine shots on goal, the highest figure for a player in the Europa League so far. With his total of three goals (in addition to the brace against Bucharest, he also scored against Stuttgart), he is currently the top scorer in the competition.
Xherdan Shaqiri is only the second FC Basel player (since data was collected in 2009) to score three goals in an international match. Previously, only Marco Streller achieved this in November 2011 against Otelul Galati in the Champions League.
This season, the 34-year-old already has 10 goals and 9 assists in 20 games across all competitions. This means that the captain has been directly involved in more than half of all Basel goals.
"Hopefully one day without my scoring points"
As much as Shaqiri enjoys the limelight: He puts the team first. It is only when he is asked about his decisive influence that he talks about himself: "I always try to perform to the best of my ability, to score goals and make assists. And if I score and provide assists, then that's the way it is," he says.
"We all try to give our best performance in every game. If we can do that, we'll be successful - hopefully even without my scoring at some point."
According to Shaq, they should certainly have scored more goals against their opponents, who were outnumbered. "We have to draw our conclusions from this and do better on Sunday. I really want to go into the international break with a win. We have a score to settle with Lugano. We want to settle that." You can find out whether Shaqiri also works his magic against the Ticino side live on blue Sport from 2pm.