Embarrassing injury problem behind Shaqiri struggles at Liverpool

Xherdan Shaqiri’s increasingly peripheral role at Liverpool of late has been explained by Switzerland national side – with a more-than-usual injury the apparent cause.

The playmaker arrived in a bargain £12million deal from Stoke over the summer and looked to be money extremely well spent as the former Bayern Munich and Inter Milan man made an impressive start to life at Anfield.

But since the turn of the year, Shaqiri has found himself playing an increasingly-limited role under Jurgen Klopp, with his poor run of seeing him pretty much drop out of the German’s thinking; a 20-minute appearance off the bench in the 0-0 draw at Manchester United has been the only action the player has seen in Liverpool’s last eight games.

His lack of action has certainly raised eyebrows among our Liverpool supporters, who have called on Klopp to usher him back into the side at the expense of the off-colour Mohamed Salah.

However, a reason behind his slump in 2019 could be attributed to an injury many did not know he was carrying – and given the sensitive nature of it, is probably one the player best wanted to hide.

While nothing official has emerged from Liverpool – and Klopp has explained why he still hopes Shaqiri can prove a long-term replacement for Philippe Coutinho – the Swiss national side’s tweet explained:  “The player suffers from inflammation in the pubic area.”

The reported injury, although vague in its nature, is likely to provoke plenty of laughs among Reds supporters. But joking aside, given the pain is likely to be hindering Shaqiri and limiting his game-time, it offers the first real explanation as to why the player appears to have dropped out of the first-team picture at Liverpool in recent weeks.