Even if you had never watched Xherdan Shaqiri play a full match, it’s likely you have seen one of his highlights. There is no shortage of them. That breakaway goal and controversial celebration against Serbia in the 2018 World Cup. That assist in the Liverpool-Barcelona comeback. That ridiculous bicycle kick against Poland at Euro 2016. Any of his pinpoint free-kick goals for Stoke.
This week, that career reached its low point – a disappointing two and a half seasons in Major League Soccer ended via mutual contract termination. Heralded as a potential franchise-altering acquisition for a desperate Chicago Fire team in 2022, the 32-year-old leaves the US having rarely looked above average in MLS. Often, he was significantly below that level. Given the money involved in his acquisition, there’s a compelling case to be made for Shaqiri as the league’s worst-value signing of all time.
Related: ‘You can’t have barriers’: is pay-to-play having a corrosive effect on US soccer?
As exciting as Shaqiri can be, there were plenty of reasons for caution. He had missed at least 10 games due to injury in five of the previous six seasons before joining Chicago. At least in part because of those injuries, his most consistent role at club level involved coming off the bench, meaning he was not usually the focal point of a team’s attack, as he would be expected to be for the Fire. Shaqiri’s important role for Switzerland meant he’d miss further games in MLS, which often plays through Fifa’s international windows.
If the Fire front office saw those red flags, they ignored them. Then-sporting director Georg Heitz, who also stepped down this week, was at FC Basel during Shaqiri’s breakthrough at the turn of the 2010s, and he spent big for a reunion with his countryman. The Fire paid a reported $7.5m to Lyon for Shaqiri (then a club record), and handed him a contract paying just over $8.1m a year in guaranteed compensation, according to figures released by the MLS Players’ Association. It was the richest deal in MLS history up to that point.
In total, that’s a $30m outlay from Chicago for Shaqiri’s tenure – or around $1m per goal contribution (though the total could be less depending on the terms of the contract termination). Shaqiri scored 16 goals and 13 assists in 75 appearances across all competitions for Chicago, with half of those goals coming from the penalty spot.
The output is barren enough that MLS’s own highlight compilation of…