On Thursday night, the Reds will travel to Austria to play LASK Linz in the Europa League. The sad Besian Idrizaj narrative will forever link the two clubs.
Rafael Benitez frequently visited Wrexham before it became known for its celebrity visitors.
The initial preseason friendly between the Reds and the Football League side was played in north east Wales in each of the first four summers of the Spaniard’s time as Liverpool manager. The games quickly became events that the locals looked forward to.
A brace from Anthony Le Tallec handed the Reds a 2-1 victory in 2004, Benitez’s first game in command of Liverpool, at a time when no one could have predicted what would happen next. One year later, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher were taking the Champions League trophy onto the Racecourse Ground field before a 4-3 victory that included a pair of braces from Milan Baros and Fernando Morientes.
Due to international competitions and other obligations, the match’s final two seasons featured a mixture of squad and youth players, but on both occasions they gave Reds supporters a glimpse of the tall teenage forward Besian Idrizaj, an Austrian youth international of Kosovan descent who started 2006’s 2-0 victory upfront with Craig Bellamy. Then, in a 3-2 victory in 2007, he scored a hat-trick in the first 26 minutes. Gagging was evident.
Idrizaj joined from LASK Linz in 2005 following a successful trial, signing a two-year deal with the option of a third, but he hadn’t played in a competitive first-team match since. He was eager to receive the chance.
Several scouts from across the continent first noticed him at the 2004 European Under-17 Championships in France, which the hosts won owing to standout performances from Karim Benzema, Samir Nasri, and Hatem Ben Arfa. Idrizaj joined LASK a year earlier from the smaller Admira Linz club, and the 2004–05 season would turn out to be his big break as he played 28 times for the first squad. Liverpool invited him for a trial because he had a well-known name in all of Europe.
He arrived during those exciting post-Istanbul weeks for the club and immediately declared, “I have always been a Liverpool fan and it is a dream come true to play for them. “You must take advantage of the opportunity to go on trial to Liverpool. A trial involving the current Champions League champions cannot be disregarded. To participate, I would have even swum across the channel.
The Austrian, who has not yet turned 18, was always going to be a signing for the youth ranks rather than the first team. After initially struggling with injuries in his first season, the 6 foot 2 inch forward, who compares himself to Zlatan Ibrahimovic in terms of playing style and personality, settled into Hughie McAuley and Gary Ablett’s second-string team for the 2006–07 season.
A talented group of players made up the squad, including highly regarded defender Jack Hobbs from Lincoln City, Godwin Antwi, who shared Idrizaj’s apartment, attracted from Zaragoza, exciting winger Paul Anderson from Hull, and Dutch forward Jordy Brouwer from Ajax, who were all complemented by up-and-coming local players Lee Peltier, Stephen Darby, Jay Spearing, Sean Highdale, and Craig Lindfield. Those who were still young
Idrizaj was already on loan at Luton by that point, playing seven times for a Hatters team that was last in the Championship and scoring once in a 3-1 victory at Southend that also sent the hosts to the Championship. At Roots Hall, he raced onto a ball over the top and finished coolly with his left foot. He was cool and collected. It would be his only goal in the English league.
However, he has always had north east Wales, especially that day in Wrexham on July 7, 2007, when he scored three goals in the span of 23 minutes, all of which were assisted by Jermaine Pennant, whose cross for the third was met by the young forward with a strong header a la Zlatan.
“I still remember the day,” Besian’s brother Qerim said in an interview with The Athletic in 2020. “At the time, the internet wasn’t as advanced as it is now, and calling Besian required a prepaid card. Did you check the Liverpool website? he asked his mother when he called her later. I replied, “No. Why? What occurred? Check it out, he said. He felt a lot of pride.
“And it was something to be proud of. So I typed in Liverpool FC and went onto the homepage, and the first story was Besian Idrizaj scores a 23-minute hat-trick. I said, ‘Wow, man. This is amazing? How did you do that?’”
Idrizaj was to be disappointed if he believed that this would be his big break into the first team. After losing the Champions League final, Liverpool exercised their option to extend his contract by another year, although this was the summer in which they bought Fernando Torres, with Andriy Voronin also joining on a free transfer and Peter Crouch still available to play the tall striker’s position.
After the Wrexham hat-trick, Benitez said menacingly, “He scored three but knows it should have been four, he needs to mature in some aspects of his game.” Benitez didn’t think the Austrian was ready for a spot in his squad. He didn’t play in another summertime friendly, and he eventually moved to south London’s Crystal Palace on loan. However, the deal didn’t work out since Peter Taylor had been fired, and Neil Warnock was willing to allow the young player return to Liverpool.
Idrizaj, at 21 and an under-21 international, decided to spend the latter part of the 2007-08 season back in Austria with Wacker Innsbruck, aiming to catch the notice of the senior team ahead of the European Championships they were joint hosting with Poland.
Idrizaj needed immediate medical attention after fainting on the field, clutching his chest, immediately after entering the game against Sturm Graz, and here is where things started to become concerning. He would dismiss it as a virus, maybe attempting to downplay the gravity of the situation given that he was a player with a contract expiring that summer and was anxious to play. He wasn’t given a long-term contract by Wacker.
Without a club to join, he was forced to take a lengthy vacation that lasted months before he eventually rejoined LASK Linz, this time just for training. However, he was to get sick again during one of his first sessions. Similar to the Innsbruck incident, he underwent a full physical examination by medical professionals. Although nothing immediately life-threatening was discovered, Idrizaj understood he would have to give up football for a while.
After several agonizing months, he felt ready to try again by the summer of 2009, with a return to the Championship as his ultimate goal. He apparently showed interest in Yeovil and Nottingham Forest before winning a two-year contract at Swansea after impressing during a trial. He then reportedly fell in love with Wales once more, just as he had that afternoon in Wrexham.
Manager Paulo Sousa expressed his happiness that the player had signed. “I’ve been aware of him as a player since his time at Liverpool and with the Austrian national team. Besian has positive traits and is capable of playing away along the front line; I think he will be a huge asset. He is a young football player with good talent, but he hasn’t participated in a competitive game in a while. It will take him some time to become used to the rigors of our league.
There was a caution there, yet in his first few weeks with Swansea, Idrizaj came off the bench three times, one in a spectacular League Cup loss to Scunthorpe that saw them finish with eight men. His lone start came in a 1-0 victory over Plymouth in December, where he was paired with Ashley Williams and Joe Allen, both Wales internationals.
Idrizaj found it difficult, though, and there was also the nagging worry about his health problems. Injuries and competition for positions made it difficult. Although his physicians were happy for him to participate, he would wear a heart rate monitor during practice since he was constantly concerned about falling once more.
Idrizaj left for Austria in the early weeks of the offseason to spend some downtime with his brother and their partners after being a member of the Swansea team that just missed the playoffs in the 2009–10 season. He experienced a heart attack in Linz in the early hours of May 15, 2010. He struggled to be saved by his brother and the ambulance workers, but was later declared dead in the hospital. He was 22.
At the Liberty Stadium, tributes to Idrizaj were paid, and Swansea observed a moment of respect before to their 2010–11 home opener, a 4-0 victory over Preston. The team also retired Idrizaj’s No. 40 jersey, and at the conclusion of that season, when they won their first-ever playoff game, 4-2 over Reading, and achieved promotion to the Premier League, the players raised the trophy while wearing t-shirts with Idrizaj’s image on them.
Before the play-off semifinal against Nottingham Forest, goalkeeper Dorus de Vries had stated: “A lot of us still talk about him. We are still thinking about him. You can’t just forget that he was a great friend in addition to being a fantastic teammate and colleague. We all agreed that this year would be for him, and maybe this season we are living up to our collective promise. They undoubtedly did.
“He’s always in our memories,” winger Nathan Dyer would say after the Wembley win, with manager Brendan Rodgers, on his own journey to Liverpool, adding: “The journey was a great remembrance to him all the way through the season. I felt that he was really in the heart of the players and people.”