itsbeautifuloutside

Switzerland v Ecuador

Brazilia, 15th June 2014

Match Report

Thus far in the tournament there hadn’t been a bad game, so I sat down to watch Switzerland V Ecuador hoping that the law of averages didn’t mean I had to report on the first 0-0. It wasn’t a classic game, but there were goals and a nice bit of late drama to keep things interesting enough. Adrian Chiles straight away chickens out of using my ‘Group of Shit’ label and calls it the ‘Group of Easy’ which doesn’t sound as good, then they show the enormous queues outside the ground 10 minutes before kick off, there are duly swathes of empty seats visible once the game starts, a theme for many games I’ve seen so far. Let’s be fair to ITV pundits, when you’re literally sitting on the beach to do your work it IS hard to get motivated to try, so who can blame Gus Poyet when he states that this is a ‘very important game for Ecuador’ as the extent of his pre-match analysis? Then we meet the commentary team- Sam Matterface and Clarke Carlisle. Matterface is in fact excellent on TalkSport, someone who really knows his football and works well with Stan Collymore on the domestic game, so I’m left to focus on Carlisle to see if he continues his ‘try-too-hard-to-show-I’m-not-as-thick-as-all-other-footballers’ schtick that he has done when I’ve heard him in the past. Still, he looks to have done his homework on the players (or maybe read my group preview) and wonders whether Switerland’s Shaqiri will provide defensive cover for Lichtsteiner.

Ecuador start in lively fashion, forcing early set pieces and looking to take on opponents and we also see some crunching challenges from both sides but much of the quality is poor. Lichtsteiner (nicknamed Forrest Gump apparently) makes a couple of early bursts down the right but messes up his cross both times, while Ecuador’s long passes are wayward. It takes 15 minutes before Shaqiri gets into the game for the Swiss, showing composure on the ball and making an inventive pass, before making space for himself to have a low shot that is easily saved, then Rodriguez has a long shot that Dominguez fumbles wide, as Switzerland start to grow into the game. Then after 21 minutes Ecuador take the lead. A free kick near the corner flag is whipped into a dangerous area by Ayovi, and Enner Valencia is completely unmarked right in front of goal- he couldn’t miss, and his simple header flies into the net. It was a good cross, but the Swiss were too disorganised. Then as they look for a swift reply they completely balls up a corner, taking it short before backheeling it to nobody, as if it was a training ground routine they forgot they were executing.

The Swiss have a couple of long range efforts, Inler in particular forcing the keeper into a decent save, and start to build up the corner count, but keep wasting them. Shaqiri is at the heart of most of their moves, but is having a frustrating time as Ecuador start to sit deeper and deeper, waiting for half time. Carlisle says that Shaqiri is “either awesome or rubbish” and pinpoints why he can’t get into the Bayern Munich team as despite his talent, he just doesn’t seem reliable. Linked with Liverpool as a possible Lallana alternative, they might start thinking the extra £5m for Adam is worth it after all based on this showing.

As half time approaches, Ecuador do make some forays forwards and have a half-hearted penalty shout, but they don’t exactly look terrifying on the break and the game drifts towards the break. It’s about now that I start to think my initial assessment of the group was about right. Neither side is incompetent exactly, they just lack the class of the candidates to win the tournament. Passes go astray when they get into the final third, crossing is frequently poor, while both defences are generally adequate- if anything I’d say that the Swiss have a slightly more inventive midfield (they at least try to work their way into dangerous positions whereas Ecuador tend to hope pace and power can burst them forwards), but Ecuador have the lead because they punished the most glaring error of the game so far.

Glenn Hoddle turns into Arry Redknapp at half time, moaning about zonal marking and talking of a ‘triffic’ ball in. Poyet and Vieira also pile in on zonal, and Adrian Chiles feels he has to chip in with the mind blowing observation that “it all comes down to who gets his head on it first! If it’s a defender then you’ll probably be ok!” If only defensive coaches had realised this before. Glenn has trouble pronouncing the ‘lad that came on against England’, Ecuadorian sub Rojas, has 2 or 3 goes at it, before asking Poyet how to say it. Later on he called Gus, ‘Jus’. Then Chiles gets upset that the ball for the free kick that led to the goal was not placed in the little semi circle the ref had painted, but was slightly to the side of it. At half time, Switzerland replace the anonymous winger Stocker with Mehmedi. An early break for them gives Lichtsteiner yet another chance to push forward, and he is slightly less wasteful than usual, a low shot being deflected wide. From the corner, Mehmedi heads in from an identical position to Valencia’s earlier goal for a Swiss equaliser. Carlisle complains that keeper Dominguez left himself stranded behind Mehmedi and his marker and ‘had to try to reach-around’ which brought a childish laugh from me.

The game quickly reverts to type, with more wastefulness from both sides whenever they get into dangerous areas. Enner Valencia does best, moving forward and hitting a dipping shot that goes just over. Ecuador’s Noboa flings himself into a waist high challenge, but it goes unremarked upon and unpunished, it was probably more clumsy than dirty. Montero also breaks the mould by making a run down the left channel and hitting a powerful shot on target, but Benaglio in the Swiss goal parries it wide.

You could imagine the whistles around Wembley if England’s passing was as unthreatening as Switzerland’s, but suddenly they become incisive and a pass makes its way through to Drmic whose shot is at the keeper but has enough power to squeeze into the goal- the flag is up however, although it looked at first that the ball was deflected to him off a defender and shouldn’t have been disallowed. It takes ages before we get a replay, which confirms that Xhaka had stepped over the ball without touching it when Drmic appeared offside- it’s another poor decision by the officials at this tournament and Switzerland should be 2-1 up. Carlisle calls it ‘controversial’, but is it controversial when it is a factually incorrect decision? It was just wrong.

The Swiss nearly make amends straight away, but Shaqiri again wastes a chance, shooting into the side netting, then Banaglio nearly makes a hash of dealing with a hopeful through ball. As the game reaches the closing stages, a Shaqiri run draws a free kick in a dangerous position but he hits it into the wall, which summarises Shaqiri’s game- promising much but delivering little.

Enner Valencia spins behind Djourou who brings him down, in one of the few occasions that Ecuador’s passes out of defence successfully finds its target, then Ecuador earn another free kick 30 yards out which Aroyo hits well but is saved in the centre of the goal.

Then at the end we have the drama lacking from most of the game. In the 93rd minute Antonio Valencia makes his first impression in the game, driving forward and giving a low cross to Arroyo in space on the edge of the box, but he dwells on it when an early shot was required and Behrami makes an excellent tackle. Behrami then leads the charge out of defence, bursting over half way and the ball is worked to the left for Rodriguez, whose low cross is turned in at the near post by Seferowic, another substitute who wins it for the Swiss. The final whistle goes almost immediately.

Overall, the Swiss were probably marginally the better side and deserved the luck after having a goal wrongly disallowed- ITV praising the ref for giving an obvious advantage during the winning goal, ignoring the terrible error. Chiles says that Hitzfeld is a wise old owl and ‘has now grown even wiser whiskers’- what on earth is he on about? He then says that he’s not sure if Behrami wanted the advantage when fouled during his run forward- has any football pundit or presenter made a statement as obviously untrue? Man of the match is a tough one, as most the players that caught the eye did so because they kept messing up. I’ll give it to Enner Valencia- he scored Ecuador’s goal, went close with another effort and was fairly cynically fouled when he turned well and had a run on goal.

Group of Shit, or Group of Easy, whichever you want, this game won’t have disproved either of those preconceptions. The late goal will have given Switzerland one foot into the last 16 however.

Jickster