Gökhan İnler

Early career

Born in Olten in the Canton of Solothurn, Inler began his career at Basel, later Aarau. On 20 March 2005, he made his Swiss Super League debut in a 2–3 home defeat against Grasshoppers. In January 2006, he was signed by Zürich and was part of the 2005–06 and 2007–08 Swiss championship-winning teams.

Udinese

2007–08 season

Inler joined Udinese of the Italian Serie A in July 2007 after the Udine-based club met a buy-out clause in his Zürich contract, joining for an undisclosed fee and signing a five-year contract. He scored his first goal for Udinese in a 2–1 win over Torino, netting in the 52nd minute to make the score 2–0 for Udinese. On 30 March 2008, Inler scored his second Serie A goal, opening the scoring in an eventual 3–1 win over Fiorentina. Inler also set-up striker Antonio Di Natale for the winning goal later in the match. In Inler's first season in Italy, he started all domestic games for Udinese, scoring two goals and providing two assists. Inler and Udinese had a successful season, finishing seventh in Serie A and thus earning a berth in the first round of next season's UEFA Cup.

2008–09 season

On the opening day of the 2008–09 Serie A season, Inler scored the third goal of a 3–1 win over Palermo and provided an assist for one of Antonio Di Natale's two goals. On 18 September, Inler then scored in the first leg of a UEFA Cup qualifying round game away against Borussia Dortmund, a game Udinese won 0–2.…

Inler played for the Swiss and Turkish national under-21 teams before debuting for the Swiss senior team on 2 September 2006 in an exhibition game against Venezuela in Basel. Inler played all of Switzerland's matches at UEFA Euro 2008 in which they were eliminated at the group stage on home soil. Due to the absence of regular captain Alexander Frei on 16 June 2010, Inler captained Switzerland in a 1–0 victory against Spain in the group stage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Frei returned for the second group game, but Inler was again the captain in the third, a goalless draw with Honduras. After Frei's retirement in 2011, Inler became the Swiss captain, and played all four matches as they reached the last 16 of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. He was left out of the Swiss squad for UEFA Euro 2016 due to his lack of game time at Leicester City during the 2015–16 season.

On 13 June 2024, Inler has been appointed as a Technical Director at Udinese.

A hard-working, tenacious, and tactically versatile midfielder, Inler is capable of aiding his team both defensively and offensively; an intelligent player, he is known both for his stamina and his movements off the ball, although his most prominent trait is his powerful and accurate striking ability from distance with both feet, and also from set pieces, which enables him to contribute to his team's offensive play with goals from midfield. Primarily a ball-winner, Inler is usually deployed as a central or defensive midfielder, where he is also capable of functioning creatively as a deep-lying playmaker in front of the defensive line, due to his vision, passing range, and ability to control the tempo of his team's play; his long passing accuracy allows him to effectively switch the play and create chances for teammates after winning back possession. Due to his height and physical attributes, he is also effective in the air.