GENEVA (AP) — Inspired by Xherdan Shaqiri’s return home from Major League Soccer, Basel sealed its first Swiss league title since 2017 on Sunday without playing.
Second-placed Servette’s failure to win — drawing 0-0 at home to third-placed Young Boys — left Basel 11 points clear with three rounds left.
The 33-year-old Shaqiri has starred in the title run-in for his hometown club which he rejoined last August after three unremarkable seasons with Chicago Fire.
Shaqiri scored a hat trick in less than 10 minutes on Saturday, after Basel was reduced to 10 men, in a 5-2 win at Lugano. The second goal was an instinctive, curling and dipping shot like when he scored for Switzerland at the 2024 European Championship against Scotland.
Seven straight wins for Basel, scoring five goals in each of the last three games, turned a tight title race involving at least five teams into a procession.
Shaqiri was the spark with nine goals and seven assists during the winning streak to raise his season tallies in the league to a career-best 18 goals and 20 assists.
The playmaker has now won the Swiss league in each of his four seasons with Basel, after the first three titles began when he was aged 18 in 2010. That started a Basel run of eight straight titles ending in 2017.
Shaqiri left Basel in 2012 to join Bayern Munich where the next season he won the first of his two Champions League winners’ medals. The second came with Liverpool in 2019.
Basel will enter the Champions League next season in the qualifying playoffs round in August. The Swiss league runner-up will enter in the second qualifying round in July, needing to beat three opponents to advance to the lucrative 36-team league phase.
Basel is coached by former Switzerland midfielder Fabio Celestini who took over in October 2023 when the team was last in the standings.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Basel's Xherdan Shaqiri, right, celebrates with his teammates during the Super League soccer match between FC Lugano and FC Basel in Lugano, Saturday, Mai 10, 2025. (Samuel Golay/Keystone via AP)
Basel's Xherdan Shaqiri celebrates during the Super League soccer match between FC Lugano and FC Basel in Lugano, Saturday, Mai 10, 2025. (Samuel Golay/Keystone via AP)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday fired off another warning to the government of Cuba as the close ally of Venezuela braces for potential widespread unrest after Nicolás Maduro was deposed as Venezuela's leader.
Cuba, a major beneficiary of Venezuelan oil, has now been cut off from those shipments as U.S. forces continue to seize tankers in an effort to control the production, refining and global distribution of the country's oil products.
Trump said on social media that Cuba long lived off Venezuelan oil and money and had offered security in return, “BUT NOT ANYMORE!”
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO!” Trump said in the post as he spent the weekend at his home in southern Florida. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not explain what kind of deal.
The Cuban government said 32 of its military personnel were killed during the American operation last weekend that captured Maduro. The personnel from Cuba’s two main security agencies were in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, as part of an agreement between Cuba and Venezuela.
“Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years,” Trump said Sunday. “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”
Trump also responded to another account’s social media post predicting that his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will be president of Cuba: “Sounds good to me!” Trump said.
Trump and top administration officials have taken an increasingly aggressive tone toward Cuba, which had been kept economically afloat by Venezuela. Long before Maduro's capture, severe blackouts were sidelining life in Cuba, where people endured long lines at gas stations and supermarkets amid the island’s worst economic crisis in decades.
Trump has said previously that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, would slide further with the ouster of Maduro.
“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”
A person watches the oil tanker Ocean Mariner, Monrovia, arrive to the bay in Havana, Cuba, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
President Donald Trump attends a meeting with oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
