The Swiss national football team has started preparing for the controversial World Cup in Doha. The leaders Xhaka and Sommer, recently ailing, should be ready to play – and the ticket contingent for Swiss fans is far from exhausted.
The Doha skyline in the background: the Swiss footballers in the first World Cup training session on Tuesday afternoon.
Something was wrong. In the first World Cup training match on Tuesday afternoon in Doha, the Swiss footballers played 11 against 11 field players, without a goalkeeper, in a revolutionary 4-4-3 system.
Which only meant this: no races against time until the first World Cup match on November 24 against Cameroon, all Swiss national players in good health. Including team leader Granit Xhaka, who was substituted off in the weekend’s last game with club Arsenal with stomach problems; including Yann Sommer, the goalkeeper, who twisted his ankle in mid-October and has been out since.
Everyone there and no surprise guests. The Swiss footballers arrived in the disputed World Cup country Qatar late on Monday evening and, as it turned out, they had in fact not carried any other full-backs in their five-ton luggage.
To the astonishment of many, national coach Murat Yakin only included two full-backs in the 26-strong World Cup squad, Silvan Widmer and Ricardo Rodriguez. Perhaps Yakin hopes that instead of a possible replacement, a portion of luck has traveled with him. May Widmer and Rodriguez never be injured or suspended, necessitating emergency calls.
The Swiss ticket contingent not exhausted
In Doha, the Swiss live in a hotel that the national association (SFV) had checked to see whether it had been built without the use of forced labourers. Sometimes the kind of reconnaissance before a World Cup says almost as much as a thousand words.
The numbers of Swiss fans expected in Qatar also speak their own language. The SFV has sold around 1,500 tickets each for the games against Cameroon and Serbia (December 2nd), and a good 2,500 for the Brazil game (November 28th). The SFV quota would have been around twice as high for all three games. When the Swiss also met Serbia in the group stage of the World Cup in Kaliningrad in 2018, there were around 5,000 Swiss people in the stadium.
On Wednesday, the Swiss footballers will leave Doha again for a night and a game, on Thursday they will play a friendly against Ghana in Abu Dhabi. This encounter should mean something like an attunement to the first World Cup opponent Cameroon. But with such simulations, one always wonders how much two selections really play the same football simply because their nations are on the same continent and separated by just three countries.
Yakin would have to be inventive in the defender’s distress
The Ghanaians, for their part, will meet Portugal, South Korea and Uruguay in the World Cup group stage – it is questionable which opponent the Swiss should imitate for Ghana. Portugal? Because from Europe and even only separated by two countries? And which Swiss player plays like Cristiano Ronaldo? And would he also be a good full-back if needed?
Portugal would also have a more varied array of full-backs to offer; on the right João Cancelo and Diogo Dalot from Manchester clubs City and United, on the left Raphaël Guerreiro (Dortmund) and Nuno Mendes (Paris Saint-Germain). But the Swiss coach Yakin should be aware that he would have to be inventive in an emergency. Renato Steffen, an attacking midfielder, has been valiantly defended on previous occasions. Christian Fassnacht, also offensively oriented, has already helped out for YB in the Champions League – and the rookie Fabian Rieder would be good enough in terms of football and tactics and also sufficiently undemanding to get involved in an unfamiliar role.
Pierluigi Tami, director of the national team, said in Doha on Tuesday that it is important that all players know “how we want to play” – so that everyone knows what to do when they are used in a new position. Sure, maybe a full-back is missing, but ideas for this and that case are Yakin’s thing. “He already showed in the World Cup qualifier that he always finds a creative and flexible solution.”
In addition to Widmer and Rodriguez, Steffen and Edimilson Fernandes also played at full-back in the 4-4-3 training game. Xherdan Shaqiri later left the training field early due to a blister on his foot, and the sun went to sleep on the horizon. Which, in turn, suggested that little is as old as a health bulletin or a yesterday’s tactical idea.