Xherdan Shaqiri made his Liverpool debut on Saturday, coming on as a 66th minute sub. He immediately assisted on the match winner, but we don’t really care about that. What we care about was the absurd Shaqiri goal vs Manchester United in the 82nd minute.
All Shaqiri does is score incredible goals. If you watched him play for the Swiss national team or Stoke the last few years, you’d understand this. The midfielder who has also played for Bayern Munich and Inter Milan moved to Liverpool earlier this month and made his first appearance in the International Champions Cup in front of more than 105,000 fans at the Big House in Michigan.
Less than 20 minutes into his debut, the Shaqiri goal vs Manchester United was the perfect way to endear himself to the Liverpool faithful.
Are you kidding me? I know it's just a preseason friendly, but does it get any better?
Earlier in the day we proclaimed a Luca Clemenza goal for Juventus was the best goal of the ICC, surpassing one from Alex Grimaldo earlier in that same match. But Shaqiri just destroyed that argument.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Shaqiri has scored beautiful bicycle kicks before, like this one in the 2016 Euros. And how about this one against Belarus last year. Or this winner against Serbia in the 2018 World Cup.
The Shaqiri goal vs Manchester United put an exclamation mark on Liverpool’s 4-1 win. The only highlight from the match that came close to Shaqiri’s was Juan Mata’s touch in the first half.
We can't wait to see what Shaqiri does next with Liverpool, though he'll have plenty of competition for playing time at Anfield. But when you score goals like that, there's always room for you.