Last season, the biggest revelation in Europe was Benfica. They played the most beautiful attacking football in Europe and lost in the quarterfinals of the Champions League from eventual finalist Inter Milan. This season, Bayer Leverkusen is that team, with the only difference being that they are title contenders in Bundesliga but are playing in the Europa League. And there is one familiar face in that team, who is also playing on high level – Granit Xhaka. Former Arsenal captain stayed in North London much longer that he expected but in 2023 it was really time to say goodbye and he went back to Germany. He was the captain of Borussia Monchengladbach before coming to Arsenal so he knows Bundesliga well.Xhaka: “My wife didn’t force me to leave London. I liked Leverkusen’s project!”He is playing arguably the best football in his career and even the stats show it – after 22 games in all competition, he has only four yellow cards and no red ones. The 31-year-old has an explanation.“I’m different. My mentality is completely different. I’m much calmer. Much, much calmer. There’s much more clarity and deliberation in my game. I know when to push and I know when to fall back, I know when to speed up the game and when to slow it down. When I was younger, there were many yellow and red cards, it was the same at the beginning in England. Experience teaches you that you don’t always have to go for the risky tackle. You can keep running with the player, you don’t have to go down all the time. I’ve made a huge step forward in the way I approach games” Xhaka said for The Athletic.Xhaka is proud of Leverkusen’s squad depth and the brightest young star: “Wirtz is incredible”Since the season ended in May, it was clear that this time, Xhaka would leave Arsenal. He wanted to play as the number 6, which he got in Bayer, while Mikel Arteta wanted him to play as number 8. Still, Xhaka doesn’t hold any grunges against his former coach for that, especially after he revived his destroyed career in London after he fell out with the fans in 2016.“I could not imagine myself playing for Arsenal again. I said to him, ‘I just want to be somewhere where the fans don’t boo me’. But he was so convincing. For the first time in my life, I took a decision without talking to my family first. I got up and said, ‘OK, I’ll stay’. We embraced and, from that day on, I returned to training and it was like nothing ever happened” he said.##NAJAVA_MECA_7753561##
