Xherdan Shaqiri has blasted Inter for “promising” him a new Nerazzurri – but giving him an “infrastructural shambles” instead.
Shaqiri arrived at Inter from Bayern Munich in January 2015 amidst much fanfare, but the winger lasted just half-a-season with the Beneamata and went on to join Stoke City the following summer.
“That summer, I had offers from Liverpool and Atletico Madrid,” he told Spox.
Xherdan Shaqiri has blasted Inter for “promising” him a new Nerazzurri – but giving him an “infrastructural shambles” instead.
Shaqiri arrived at Inter from Bayern Munich in January 2015 amidst much fanfare, but the winger lasted just half-a-season with the Beneamata and went on to join Stoke City the following summer.
“That summer, I had offers from Liverpool and Atletico Madrid,” he told Spox.
“I wanted to leave Bayern at all costs. I decided to join Liverpool, Brendan Rodgers had already called me a couple of times before the World Cup, but Bayern stopped me.
“The Bayern directors thought that the situation would change, but it didn’t. Gianluca Gaudino was preferred to me in the first game.
“This was, of course, a signal for me, in that I didn’t understand why they wanted to keep me at all costs.
“Inter? They simply tried for me the most. They promised me a new Inter. In the Bundesliga, I’d already won everything.
“The reception was really crazy. A security guard almost choked me because there was chaos and he had lost control.
“The lifestyle was great, almost the best six months of my life. The training complex was located in Como, also close to Switzerland.
“Italian football, however, I didn’t particularly like. It was too slow, full of tactics and difficult for me to show my explosiveness.
“Once, during a training session, I took 200 corner kicks from right and left for two hours. I had never done such a thing.
“Mancini? He wanted me at all costs. Looking back, we should’ve done some more research on the club. To do this, however, we needed more time.
“At the time, I was a bit impatient and really wanted to close the transfer because the season had already started and I wanted to leave immediately.
“Still, I never had problems with Mancini. Like Guardiola, he rotated every weekend so that there was never a fixed line-up.
“He had also done that at Manchester City and Galatasaray. I didn’t feel good so we looked for a mutual solution.
“What’s different at Stoke? The Inter infrastructure is genuinely a shambles. For a club so famous, that they couldn’t find a way to invest in infrastructure is truly amazing.
“Nutrition, recovery, performance analysis, variety in training: I find that in England, it’s all more professional.
“There’s also the grass: in Italy, the weather was nice, but the grass was always very long.
“In England, it may rain heavily, but we still train on a carpet, which is taken care of every day.”