Fire to field “strongest team possible,” but not Shaqiri in Leagues Cup opener

One day before the Fire’s first Leagues Cup match, Fire Head Coach Frank Klopas was asked about the team’s approach to the tournament and said that he wanted to put “the strongest team possible to try to advance and win” in the tournament.

In at least the first match, however, that will not include midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri, the team’s highest-paid player in history. “Shaqiri is not here. He’ll be in on Monday,” Klopas said when asked about player availability the day before the team is scheduled to face Sporting Kansas City.

It is the first time that the team has given a definitive date for Shaqiri’s reintegration to the club after his participation in the Euros with the Swiss National Team, but also marks an apparent delay from the schedule the team had originally contemplated.

With three MLS regular season games to go before the Leagues Cup – including two against top-of-table opponents in FC Cincinnati and Inter Miami – Klopas was asked about Shaqiri’s return after the Nati’s elimination in the quarterfinals to eventual runner up England, saying at the time “he's not going to be here for NYCFC, and then you have a midweek game Wednesday and Saturday, and then we have that break. So that's really the decision that we have to really think about and see – do we bring him before those games? … It's just a matter of time deciding in the next couple of days, when do we bring him back.”

A few days later, following the team’s draw at home against NYCFC, Frank Klopas said that he team “hope that before Leagues Cup, that he will be back. Now what day he comes, is it two days, is it five days before? We’re still talking, but this is something we had agreed to before he left.”

Shaqiri last featured for the Fire on May 18th against the Columbus crew before being allowed to depart early for the Swiss national team camp. At the Euros, he played a total of 71 minutes, and was on the field for the last minutes of the team’s campaign on July 6th, coming on in extra time and scoring in the shootout for his country.

While the Fire have called it “normal” for players to take time off after major tournaments, Miami’s Luis Suárez, who, at 37, is five years Shaqiri’s senior, played 29 minutes for Inter Miami on July 17th, just four days after coming on as a substitute in Uruguay’s third-place match at Copa América on July 13th and scoring a late equalizer to see the team through to penalty kicks. On July 20th, with the potential to advance his club’s lead in the Supporters Shield race on the line, he started and played the full 90 minutes.

Although Suárez’s fast return to his club was no doubt facilitated by the fact that Copa América took place in the United States, with Uruguay's last match in Charlotte, a short flight from (and in the same time zone as) Ft. Lauderdale, Shaqiri’s first minutes for the Fire will now happen no sooner than 26 days after his last competitive minutes.

A Monday return to Chicago even puts playing in Thursday’s matchup against Toluca in some doubt: With the team likely off Monday, it would give Shaqiri just two practices with the squad prior to their second, and last, group stage game against the high-powered Liga MX side.

Klopas has insisted that Shaqiri is committed to the team, noting that he “texts and wishes me, for he team, always the best of luck,” and that it has “never been the case” where he had to question that he was “committed 100 percent to help us win.”