Xhaka Marches Into His Fourth World Cup — Switzerland Bets Hard on Experience and a Striker Who Barely Played

Xhaka makes fourth Switzerland World Cup squad and at this point the man is less a player and more a national monument.

144 caps. Four straight World Cups. Sunderland’s captain is still the heartbeat of everything Switzerland do. Murat Yakin named his 26-man squad and built it on experience. Seventeen players who featured at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar are back. Ricardo Rodriguez is heading to his fourth tournament too. 136 caps and still counting. Yakin is not here to experiment. He is here to survive a group and push deeper.

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The squad has some head-scratchers. Zeki Amdouni is in. The Burnley attacker has played just three substitute appearances in the Premier League this season. He returned from a long-term knee injury earlier this month. Yakin says he is medically one hundred percent fit. He knows the system. He knows his role. That was enough. Form was not. Whether a player with almost no minutes can suddenly flip a switch on the biggest stage is a question Yakin just bet his tournament on.

Noah Okafor from Leeds and Dan Ndoye from Nottingham Forest add Premier League firepower. Cedric Itten got the call despite suffering relegation to the German third tier with Fortuna Dusseldorf. Christian Fassnacht forced his way in after topping the Swiss Super League scoring charts with 18 goals. The selection swings from logical to baffling and back again.

Young Boys forwards Alvyn Sanches and Joel Monteiro were the surprise omissions. Both were in the squad for friendlies in March. Both are out now. Yakin saw something he did not like. Or he simply trusted the veterans more.

Switzerland open against Qatar in Santa Clara on June 13. Then Bosnia-Herzegovina. Then Canada. Group B is manageable. Xhaka will drag this team forward the way he always does. The old guard gets one more run. The clock is ticking on a golden generation. They know it. Yakin knows it. This is the last dance for too many of them to waste it.