Articles:
Number 1
Number 2
The articles were written when Bayern decided to let Shaqiri go and Inter Milan were the potential taker.
Key Outtakes:
- According to Bild who are usually very well-informed when it comes to German football, Guardiola was fed up with Shaqiri because he lacked in-game-intelligence and that he could not meet the high tactical requirements by the Catalan star trainer. Apparently he had not developed in the two years he was in Munich at all.
- His movement in his positioning. Guardiola's philosophy is very dynamic and clever positioning is mandatory to make it work. According to the position of the ball, players take over certain positions. At the same time, the system can be adapted by players moving that have very complex follow-ups for the room distribution of other players. For instance, not more than three players are allowed to be on a horizontal like while at the same time there are only two players max allowed on a vertical line. It's pretty complicated. Shaqiri did not quite get that concept and brought a bit of chaos for his teammates when positioning.
- His decision making in his passing game. Based on the previous point, passing changes the position of the ball and plays a very important strategic part - because players need to adapt to the new position of the ball on the fly. Constant moving and positioning is required. When changing sides with the ball, Bayern pressures the opposition to shift as well which results in gains in room. Shaqiri sometimes lacked the correct timing so that resulted in situations where he should have switched sides but chose the closer pass which put the receiver of the pass in a problematic situation while in situation where he should have passed, he simply didn't which slowed the game down or resulted in another pass without gaining territorial advantage or a dribbling - which is quite problematic in the last third of the pitch.
- His behavior in the last third of the pitch. The ball circulation isn't very problematic in the first third of the pitch and in midfield as long as you don't lose the ball. But on the other side, if you mis-judge the distribution in the last third of the pitch, that can lead to very problematic counter attacks, especially because Bayerns defence was standing quite high.
- His running lines within the combination game. Shaqiri had a problem in judgment when it comes to running lines of his teammates as well as his own. He constanly failed to see openings where he could have liberated himself from a defender or influenced the movement flow of enemy defences. Oftentimes he did not look for sprints up front - so he wasn't a passing option in front of goal and his team mates could not make a pass that gains a bit of space. And sometimes he started to run in very inappropriate moments whilst also being deep in the pocket of his marker so that he was effectively no real passing option. The most problematic thing was his high ball-fixation in tight situations. He was too close to his teammates which made him a proper passing option but the reduced distance between him and his teammates made it easy for oppositions to deal with it easily. When keeping the importance of Guardiolas emphasis on structured passing in mind, this might have been the number 1 reason why Shaqiri was out of favor at Bayern.
- His judgment of the in-game dynamics. Shaqiris main problem is his calculation of opponents' movements and how they affect his own actions and these of his teammates. Although Shaqiri has all the marks of a great footballer, robustness, speed, great coordination, strong technique, being both-footed and good shooting, he cannot play up to his potential on a regular basis. When he is confronted with extremely fast, close and complex situations, he makes mistakes.
- Conclusion: Shaqiri has numerous flaws, which isn't a problem because he has quite a number of real strenghts. His problem was, however, that his strengths weren't really visible in Guardiola's system as did his weaknesses. Pair this with not developing in 2 years and the extremely high competition at Bayern and it was obvious that he had to go.
So. There were reasons he did not really excel at Bayern. He played 20 games for Inter (747') and scored three times while having 2 assists. Not so stellar stats but acceptable for his position. The fact that Inter definitely want him out gives us room to think, though. This is the second club that wants to offload him rather urgently.
I think that with him, a club definitely needs a plan to play to his strengths while minimizing his shortcomings. I am not sure that Everton would be the right club for him because the one thing that we would need is consitency and not genius (it works both ways!). We have quite a few younger players who can go for the unexpected and also Geri is someone who will bring a bit of dis-order with him... making our front-line completely hit or miss is probably the wrong way to do it.
