A walk in the park for Jurgen and Virgil
Jurgen Klopp and Virgil van Dijk are all smiles after their win over Crystal Palace put Liverpool on top of the Premier League.
Forget the blot of relegation, Xherdan Shaqiri wants to be a Champions League winner once again.
Shaqiri was part of the Stoke City side that went down in May to end the club’s ten-year stay in the Premier League.
His attitude was even called into question by Gary Neville, who wasn’t convinced Shaqiri had done all he could to keep the Potters up.
But the pocket Swiss didn’t plan on hanging around to sample life in the Championship and he was happy to take the chance to move to Liverpool for £13 million.
And while he has gone from one end of the league to the other, Shaqiri is reacquainting himself with life in football’s fast lane.
He was a substitute for Bayern Munich as they beat Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund at Wembley in 2013 to lift European football’s biggest prize.
Now at Anfield, Shaqiri is back in the Champions League for the first time since his Bayern days and he started in last Wednesday’s 4-0 win over Red Star Belgrade.
With a hand in the Reds’ first two goals, the Swiss showed that he is suited to that level.
“It’s great to be back in the Champions League,” he says.
“I won it with Bayern, which was an unbelievable feeling.
“I have dreams of doing that with Liverpool, and why not?
“Most people know where I played and the qualities I have.
“The people in Munich still love me and I have great memories.
“Liverpool have the quality to go very far. Last year we reached the final and we will try to do the same this year.
“The motivation is there and we go again. Maybe we have to analyse what the small problem was last year.
“We have new players, the squad has more depth and we have a lot of players who can change games.
“We must be a team if we want to win.
“But we are in a very good way to try and compete with the other big clubs.”
Liverpool’s return leg with Red Star on November 6 could be a difficult evening for Shaqiri.
During this summer’s World Cup, he celebrated scoring a late winner for Switzerland against Serbia with a controversial “eagle gesture” in support of his Kosovo-Albanian roots.
The Serbs were incensed and Shaqiri can expect a hot reception in Belgrade. But he is playing it down.
He adds: “I just do my things. In the end, it’s just a football game. It’s not about politics.
“I don’t worry for nothing. I go there to play football, nothing else.”