OTD: GRANIT XHAKA BORN

On this day in 1992, current Sunderland midfielder and captain Granit Xhaka was born.

Born in Basel, Switzerland, in September 1992, Xhaka’s football journey began very early, when he was only five. Alongside his older brother, Taulant, he played for Concordia Basel, before joining the youth academy of FC Basel at the end of 2002. In 2007, he was a member of FC Basel’s under 15 team who won the Swiss Championship and he repeated this feat in 2008 and 2009 with the under 16 and under 21 teams respectively . After many years of climbing through the ranks, Xhaka joined Basel’s first team where he made his debut in the Champions League qualifiers. Throughout his time in the senior side, Xhaka won the league twice in a row and also the Swiss Cup in 2011/12.

He then went on to sign a five-year deal with Borussia Mönchengladbach for an estimated £8.5 million where he quickly became a mainstay in the club’s starting 11. Amassing 108 Bundesliga appearances, scoring six goals and competing in various other competitions, he was named club captain in 2015.

A year later, the midfielder would depart the club – heading to Arsenal for a reported £35m. In his first season at the club, he played 46 games and helped the Gunners win the 2017 FA Cup. He also later played a major role in Arsenal’s runner-up position in the 2019 Europa League where they lost to Chelsea in the final. The Swiss international was frequently criticised for his undisciplined style of play and would pick up yellow cards on a Lee Cattermole-esque regularity.

He was made captain of the team shortly after; however, this was short lived due to an incident in October 2019 in a match against Crystal Palace, where Xhaka came under fire from fans and was subbed off in the 61st minute. This heated berating and booing from the fans led to him taking his shirt off, making sarcastic gestures to the crowd and repeatedly swearing at Arsenal fans. Of course, he was stripped of the Gunners’ captaincy following this public outburst. In a later interview, he admitted that he had packed his bags and had his passport ready in the event that Unai Emery sold him at that time.

Shortly after this however, he began to redeem himself under Mikel Arteta, where he became a reliable leader and much more composed on the ball, often playing more defensively. He played a big part in Arsenal’s FA Cup win over Chelsea in 2020. He saw his best season at Arsenal in 2022/23, where he scored seven goals and got seven assists, leading the club to a second-place finish in the Premier League. In his final match as a Gunner, he scored two goals against Wolverhampton Wanderers in a 3-1 victory.

He later transferred to Bayer Leverkusen for around £21 million in June 2023. His departure from the club was controversial among fans, although most respected the turnaround he’d managed, showing commendable commitment and leadership. He has a rather unapologetic nature about him, once saying this: “If I elbow a player, I’ll be the first one to say I’m sorry but a tackle… come on guys, this is not ballet.”

He quickly became an integral part of Leverkusen’s midfield, adding structure and leadership to Xabi Alonso’s impressive team. He played a big part in the club’s double win of the Bundesliga title and the DFB-Pokal, managing to usurp the dominance of Bayern Munich in Germany. He played almost 50 matches in the 2023 season across competitions, starting in every important game. He played 45 games in the 2024-2025 season, starting in all Bundesliga matches.

In July 2025, Granit Xhaka completed a move to Sunderland for a fee of £13 million plus £4 million in add-ons on a three-year contract. This came after weeks of media speculation about the move, we were interested, then he wasn't going to come, then he was suddenly on our owner's private jet flying into the North East and he was a Sunderland player. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus pushed heavily for the move, he rang the player personally and (as mentioned) brought his personal plane to pick him up. Obviously, a player of his stature moving to a newly promoted team isn't exactly common, so the move was well covered by the media and most of the football community at least took note of it. It certainly convinced a lot of non-Sunderland fans that we weren't just going to come up and expect to come down, we were going to have a proper go at it.

His age is important, we have the second youngest squad in the Premier League, just beaten by Chelsea in that regard, and we have a lot of players who've never played top flight football in England before. We need players like him to have a chance and to hasten the development of our other players and it's no surprise he's immediately become captain. In his first few games, the midfielder has already played a key role, helping us to clean sheets against West Ham United and Crystal Palace and, most crucially, providing an assist to Wilson Isidor with a lovely cross in the dying minutes of the game against Brentford to put three points on the board. He's probably the most high profile Sunderland player since Jermain Defoe and a real symbol of the club's ambition.