‘Granit Xhaka: Drei spiele entfernt, kandidat für Ballon d'Or zu sein?’ So, went the headline in one Swiss newspaper on Monday, and despite picking up roughly no German across three weeks travelling the nation to cover this tournament, it was not a line that took much translating.
More remarkably, for a player who was once best known for a late lunge, a first-foul booking and telling his own fans to "f*** off", it did not need all that much justifying, either.
