Granit Xhaka is a Swiss professional footballer who plays for Premier League club Arsenal. He began his career at hometown club Basel before moving to Borussia Mönchengladbach. He was made captain of Borussia in 2015 at the age of 22, leading the team to UEFA Champions’ League qualification for a second successive season. He completed a high-profile transfer to Arsenal in May 2016 for a fee in the region of £30 million. He has won over 80 caps for Switzerland, representing the nation at the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and 2018, and at UEFA Euro 2016.
About Granit Xhaka in brief
Granit Xhaka (born 27 September 1992) is a Swiss professional footballer who plays for Premier League club Arsenal. He began his career at hometown club Basel, winning the Swiss Super League in each of his first two seasons. He then moved to Bundesliga team Borussia Mönchengladbach in 2012, developing a reputation as a technically gifted player and natural leader alongside criticism for his temperament. He was made captain of Borussia in 2015 at the age of 22, leading the team to UEFA Champions’ League qualification for a second successive season. He completed a high-profile transfer to Arsenal in May 2016 for a fee in the region of £30 million. He has won over 80 caps for Switzerland, representing the nation at the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and 2018, and at UEFA Euro 2016. His older brother, Taulant, is a professional footballer and plays for Basel and the Albania national team. In 2018,Xhaka was the eighth most Googled personality in Switzerland. His father Ragip was a political prisoner. He served three and a half years of a six-year prison sentence before being released in 1990. His family moved from Podujevo, District of Pristina, then part of the SFR Yugoslavia, now Kosovo, to Switzerland that year. He made his first team debut in the third qualifying round of the 2010–11 UEFA Champions League in the away match against Debrecen in the Szusza Ferenc Stadium.
He scored his first Super League goal in the 5–1 home win against FC Thun on 15 May 2011. At the end of the 2011–12 season he won the Double, the League Championship title and the Swiss Cup with the club. On 18 May 2012, Basel announced on their homepage that X haka had agreed terms with Lucien Favre’s BorussiaMöncheNGladbach. The transfer fee was not disclosed, but is estimated to be in the Region of €8.5million. In the 2014–15 Bundesliga season, he started 29 times and made substitute appearances as Gladbach finished in sixth place. On 23 September 2015, he captained Borussia for the first time in the Champions League qualifier against VfB Stuttgart, scoring his first goal of the season. On 25 August, he made his Bundesliga debut against 1899 Hoffenheim in the team’s opening match. Three days later, he played his first appearance in European competition for Borussia in 1–3 home lost to Dynamo Kyiv in qualification for the 2012–13 UEFA Champions League. In his second season at the club, he scored his only goal in a 3–2 loss at 1. FC Nürnberg. He started all 34 matches in the Bundesliga season and was named in the league’s team to qualify for the 2015–16 Champions League. He also captained the side and scored a free kick in a 4–2 win over FC Augsburg.
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