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In Dublin the Swiss national team beat Ireland 1-0 – the votes for the game.
After more than six months of suffering, the Swiss national team found their way back to winning ways on Tuesday evening. The protagonists were correspondingly relieved. “It is important that we were finally able to achieve a complete success again, that was very positive,” said Xherdan Shaqiri, the man of the game.
Especially with regard to the European Championships. “That gives you a good feeling and we can build on that,” the 32-year-old continued.
Captain Granit Xhaka was also happy with the result: “It’s about winning, not about playing nice. We have made huge progress in this regard and we can go home with a positive feeling.”
For Yakin, “results are secondary”
However, it was far from a perfect game for the national team. Coach Murat Yakin’s team left a confident impression in the first half, but after the break not much came together.
The coach found an explanation for this: “Granit (Xhaka), who is always available to play and brings calm into the game, was of course missing in the second half. After the many changes at halftime, a completely different team was on the field in the second half.
Unlike his players, winning the test matches is not his top priority: “The result is secondary. If you want to try out some things in the game, you can’t play results-oriented. Defensively we kept a clean sheet twice, which is very pleasing. We definitely have to improve offensively.”
Who should score the goals?
How true! In the last five games, the SFV selection never scored more than once. They even remained goalless against Romania (0-1) last November and Denmark (0-0) last Saturday.
Yakin admits frankly: “We miss Breel (Embolo). The other strikers are still young and still need experience. It wouldn’t be right to just hope for Breel.”