Granit Xhaka: ‘People say you don’t give everything for the club, but that’s bull’

The behind-the-scenes documentaries so beloved of modern times are not known for their rough edges but, for Granit Xhaka, that was part of the point. He allowed the cameras into his home for the Amazon series that followed Arsenal last season and if it humanised him beyond the spiky, sometimes rash, often divisive but frequently highly effective character seen on the pitch then the film had done its work.

“For me it is fine because I have nothing to hide,” he says. “I am Granit here and the same at home. Only on the football pitch do I have a different mask: people have to accept that.”

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This is Xhaka’s seventh season at Arsenal and it has been a stint that defies ready interpretation. He began it as first choice in midfield, even though most of Mikel Arteta’s side has changed virtually beyond recognition in the past two years. Only Rob Holding and Héctor Bellerín, neither of whom is particularly close to regular first-team football, remain from Xhaka’s first campaign in 2016-17. Against most odds, given he was halfway out of the door when Arteta arrived, Xhaka has outlasted more celebrated names and it is a powerful argument for the idea that supporters’ eyes do not generally see the whole story.

Has he changed since that infamous run-in with the Emirates crowd during the match against Crystal Palace in October 2019, which led him to the brink of joining Hertha Berlin that winter? “I think I was always a good person, but different,” says the 29-year-old. “A lot of people ask me: ‘Was last season the best Granit since you were here?’ But I never had problems in this club, not with teammates, not with people in the building.