VANCOUVER. Anonymous, unglamorous, defensive and hurtful.
Switzerland sets no hearts on fire.
They are just so incredibly difficult to play against, so hopeless to get past.
Granit Xhaka drops into the center circle, and in the center circle he stays.
All the other Swiss players have rushed straight down on penalty hero Gregor Kobel, but the captain remains among all the battered and broken Colombians.
More than 150 international matches over 15 years. Now Granit Xhaka has made sure to take the power out of the yellow storm, now he has taken his national team to a place where they have never been before.
The world will not cheer, because the world was rooting for the opposing team.
In place, the Colombian supporters have been one of the biggest sub-stories of this championship. They have been that yellow chalk that colored the championship, that gilded and took over all the cities they came to.
Unlike Argentina, Brazil and England, they also do not have supporters from all corners of the earth, but they take care of themselves, fill the arenas on their own. No one else has come with the same number, no one has traveled as far.
Continuity dream
Switzerland haven’t left the west coast at all, they’ve played three straight games here in Vancouver.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s epic continental odyssey has taken them from the championship’s southernmost venue to its northernmost. They’ve been down in the southeast tip, and now they’re up in the northwest corner. They have crossed the American prairie with their caravans, made it all the way here to the Canadian Pacific coast.
“They started to win the game right at the national anthem,” Ghana captain Carlos Quieroz said after being beaten by Colombia in the round of 16. “Colombia became stronger by having 60,000 fans on their side, and that affects an inexperienced team like us. Because of the work that Colombia’s twelfth player did, I felt that some of my players could not keep their composure.”
It was Ghana. But this is Switzerland.
An inexperienced team that can be affected by external circumstances…?
Switzerland is the exact opposite, a Lasse Lagerbäck-esque dream of continuity. Conservatively calculated, they have worked in exactly the same way with exactly the same players for at least three championship cycles, but if you draw the line a little further, it takes you at least 15 years back in time.
They do what they have to do.
700 miles from Bogotá, the Colombians also transformed BC Place in Vancouver into a yellow tide – a sea of yellow – and already three quarters before kick-off the arena rocked to “La Barra Incondicional”.
The red ones didn’t let up for that.
Not Argentina–Egypt
With Johan Manzambi out, Murat Yakin sent out a starting line-up with over 800 caps in the bag – an average of 74 – and they played just like they always do. Colombia tried to pick up the pace with their chaotic clash football, but playing Switzerland is like trying to squeeze water out of a big damn gray stone. No openings, no cracks – just sturdy, gloss-free resistance.
The wind in the Colombian game died down, the volume in the Colombian stands dropped.
In the break, Yakin then took out the only somewhat inexperienced player in the starting eleven (Ardon Jashari, 11 internationals) and put in another reliable old warhorse (Djibril Sow, 55).
So far into the match, Colombia had had a decent finish – midfield comet Gustavo Puerta with a long-range shot – while Switzerland found two half-baked conversion chances.
It wasn’t Argentina-Egypt, it wasn’t.
The second half disappeared, and better yet will never come again. Going into extra time, the hope was that more and more substitutions would gradually open up the game. We went a little towards that, but there was no more than a rib header by Jhon Lucumí and an over-shoveled giant shot by Jaminton Campaz.
Done the job
Colombia tried to push the game, Switzerland calmly played it.
Now, it is not a violation of football’s own moral system, but history has shown that the team playing for a penalty kick decision undeniably benefits from actually mastering that moment.
Exactly 20 years ago, Switzerland played a sort of parallel match to this, a round of 16 against Ukraine that is widely recognized as the least eventful play-off match in World Cup history.
The crux that time wasn’t really that the Swiss barely had a shot on goal for 120 minutes – but that they then didn’t even manage to get the ball into the net from the penalty spot. Three shots, three misses.
Since then, they have, among other things, gone out of the last three EC tournaments on penalties, so the burden of proof was heavy when the decision did approach.
But what did we expect…? It’s not that Murat Yakin is stupid, it’s not that a Swiss national team doesn’t prepare properly. For the past few weeks they’ve been running some kind of penalty shootout workshops, and apparently it’s done the trick.
Hard work and patience
Manuel Akanji missed in Düsseldorf last time and Manuel Akanji missed even more badly now – but from the very first kick it was clear that the Swiss shooters went forward with better emotional control than the hysterically agitated Colombians.
And so they had another presence on the line.
Yann Sommer was and is an excellent goalkeeper, but his 183 centimeters was enough to save point 1 of 14 penalties in the three painful EC losses.
Gregor Kobel is taller, bigger, has a better penalty kick – and this time a single parry was enough.
The Colombian masses have no choice but to begin the retreat, Switzerland can look forward to the first ever World Cup quarter-final.
Next it is Leo Messi and Argentina they will bore and frustrate with their structure, their toil and their patience. I absolutely do not rule out that they succeed.
