Shaqiri's emotional confession: Switzerland gave everything to my family, I give everything to Switzerland!

Switzerland beat Serbia by 2:1 in Kaliningrad and is now in second place in Group E, writes Periscopi.

Meritors for the Victorics' victory were Jaka and Shaqiri after both scored goals at the meeting.

Gerdan Shaqiri, football player from Zegra who is now being desperately sought by Liverpool, has made a personal confession, where all the world's super-stars are doing, in Players Triubune.

The Swiss national star shows the difficulties his family has experienced and shows that his idol is Ronaldo orgynal.

Below is Shaqiri's full confession at the Players Tribune:

Our house had no heat. Just a big chimney. It was a very, very old house on a farm in Basel, and it was. I didn't even think about it. I kept myself warm, running crazy”.

My older brother was the one, who always complained about the cold, because his room was away from the fireplace. He had to sleep with about five blankets during the winter”.

My family had left Kosovo before the war started, when I was four, and tried to live a life in Switzerland, with me and my two brothers. It wasn't easy. My father didn't speak German, so he had to start washing dishes in a <x0 restaurant.

Later he found a street construction job. My mother worked as a cleaning lady at office buildings in the city (I was her assistant with an electric broom, my brothers cleaned the windows).

Switzerland is very expensive for everyone, but it was especially difficult for my parents, because they were sending money to family members who were still in Kosovo. At first, we could travel to see them every year. But when the war started, it was impossible to get back, and things were very difficult for family members who were stuck there. My uncle's house had been completely burned and had much suffering. My father was sending them as much money as he could, so when I was growing up, we never had extra money to spend, maybe except for something for my birthday.

An interesting story, Ronaldo was my idol. The original Ronaldo. The way he played, it was like a spell to me. During the 1998 World Final, when he got hurt and Brazil was defeated by France, I was crying indefinitely because I was very sad about him. My seventh birthday was three months after the World and I was telling my mother constantly for three months: “All I want for my birthday is Ronaldo's yellow fan. Please, just buy me this ghost”.

So my birthday comes and my mom only has one box for me. She opened it and was Ronaldo's yellow fanla. It was just one of those fake fans that bought them on the market. I don't think there was any logo on it. It was just a yellow starring and a number nine green. My parents had no money to buy a truth, but it didn't matter to me. It was probably the happiest day of my life. I wore it for almost 10 days, I also had a pair of “seer” yellow, which I wore along with this lantern.

I was probably the only immigrant child in my school, and I don't think Swiss children understood why I was so obsessed with football. In Switzerland, football is just a sport. It's not life, as it is in some other countries. I remember, four years later, when Ronaldo appeared at the World Cup with that hairstyle, I went to the barber and said: Make me cut like Ronaldo. But then I had white hair and curly hair, so it was crazy. I went to school and all the kids were watching me when they thought about what happened to this guy, what the hell he did.

That didn't bother me at all. I was just myself. My school was in the good part of town, but the house was only five minutes of walking from the very bad part of town, and here was the good football part. My mother begged me not to go, but I went there every day after school to play. I know people think Switzerland is all good, and most of it is, but in this park it was crazy. All teams were like the United Nations. There were Turks, Africans, Albanians, Serbs, everything. And it wasn't just football, everyone was spending time there, so there were people listening to German hip-hop, kids who were doing <x0freestyle”, girls who were walking in the field while the game was playing.

Football was real football. For example, boys were being punched all the time. I never got punched because I always kept my mouth shut. But playing in that park really helped me because I was a little boy and I learned how to play with men who were not kidding. When I was 14, I was playing for the young people of FC Basel, and we had the chance to play in the <x0Nic Cup” in Prague. The problem was that I had to lose a few days from school, and when I asked my teacher, he said “jo”. In Switzerland, teachers are very serious about school. I thought, hell, okay, I'm gonna have to pretend I'm sick.

So I made Mom write a letter to the school to say I had a flu or something, and I went to Prague for the tournament. I played very, very well and that was the first time I saw children from other countries watching me think: This is the guy from Basel. That's him. That was a really great feeling. We returned home and went to school on Monday, still pretending that I was a little sick. And the teacher immediately said: “Jerdan, come here. Come on, come on, come on”

He took me to his desk and pulled the paper out of the table. He was looking at her and he said: On the front page of the newspaper was a picture of me smiling, carrying the “Player Tour” trophy. I just looked at her and I raised my hands in the air, thinking, well... fuck! I began to receive much attention after this tour, but the money continued to be a problem for my family because the two brothers were also playing for Basel.

Whenever we had to pay to go on a tour or something, it cost three times as much. When I was 16, we had to go to a training camp in Spain, but it cost about 700 Swiss francs. Father told us one night that it was impossible, since we could not pay him. So the brothers and I all found small jobs to pay for it. I was mowing the neighbor's house bar for almost three weeks, my brother was working in a factory. We've managed to somehow get our money ready and go to Spain at the last minute.

About a year later, when I was 17, I was invited to the first team in Basel. I got in the game in the last 20 minutes of a match and I thought I was okay. The next day I showed up in training and the young coach said: What the hell was that? What were you thinking? I said: “What are you talking about?” He said: “I just talked to the coach. He said all you were doing was drive. That's enough, you're going back to the second team”. I was shocked. I thought I was finished at Basel's. Two weeks later, the club fired the coach. A new coach is here. He invited me to the first team and I never looked back. It's interesting, because he put me in the position of the left protector, even though I wanted to attack and create, so defenders always shouted at me: Come back! You have to go back!

But what can I say? Things went pretty good for me, because the newspapers were writing that maybe I'd be calling for the 2010 World Cup. I didn't know what to think. It was almost crazy. When I was invited to the team, it was a very exciting moment. I went straight home to tell my parents, they were so happy. It happened so fast. One day I was 16 years old, mowing yards in order to pay a ticket to Spain, then I was 18 years old, on a plane to South Africa to play at the World Cup.

I remember when we played against Spain, I saw Iniesta in front of me, and I thought, wow, the man I watched on TV, here he is. But the thing that I'll always remember is that, when we first arrived, we went to our hotel and had a military and armed man standing outside every door. Army man to protect us alone. I thought it was the most interesting thing in the world because I was running home from the park at night just a year before that. Now I had my personal soldier!

For my parents it was a very proud moment, to see me play in the World Cup, because they came to Switzerland with nothing and worked hard to make a good life for their children. I think the media often misunderstand my feelings for Switzerland. I feel like I have two houses. It's so simple. Switzerland gave everything to my family, and I try to give everything to the national team. But whenever I go to Kosovo, I immediately have the feeling of home, as well. It's not logical, it's just a feeling I have in my stomach.

In 2012, when we played against Albania, I put the flag of Switzerland, Albania and Kosovo on my shoes and some newspapers in Switzerland have said a lot of bad things about it. I was criticized for this, but it was crazy for me that people feel that way because it's just my identity. The good thing about Switzerland as a country is that it has always welcomed people who come from war and poverty and are looking for better lives.

Switzerland has lakes, mountains and everything. But Switzerland has the park where I played with Turks, Serbs, Albanians, Africans and German rappers. Switzerland is for everyone.

When I entered the field in 2018, I had the flag of Switzerland and Kosovo on my shoes. Not because of political causes, but because those flags are the story of my life.

Don't worry, Switzerland's flag is on my left foot. /Periscope/