Swiss papers react to team’s World Cup exit
“We’re out and we deserved nothing else,” ran the headline in Switzerland’s biggest selling newspaper Blick on Saturday.
Reactions to the Swiss team’s early exit from the World Cup after a 0-0 draw against Honduras were nothing if not sober, despite high hopes the ‘Nati’ would make it to the knock-out round like in 2006.
The consensus Saturday was that the team which beat European Champion Spain 1-0 in its opening match had proved unable to follow through, displaying much talent but little finishing finesse.
Switzerland’s only goal of the tournament came from Cape Verde-born Gelson Fernandes.
“It’s over,” titled French-language daily Le Matin, beneath a picture of downcast Swiss players hugging at the end of the match in Bloemfontein on Friday.
Few repeated earlier complaints that the referee in Switzerland’s 1-0 defeat to Chile on Monday had cost them the match by sending off Valon Behrami after 30 minutes.
Instead, pundits admitted that the Swiss simply hadn’t played well enough.
The team’s failure, “stands for the inability to properly manage the three points earned in the first group game against Spain,” wrote Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger, employing a term normally used in banking, not football.
“What the team lacked was mainly the decisive bit of class and quality, players with creativity and athletic ability,” the paper wrote.
Even the serious Neue Zuercher Zeitung found fit to mention the team’s fate on its front page, praising keeper Diego Benaglio _ who let in only one goal during the tournament _ as the only player to meet the high demands expected of a World Cup.
“The dream of a round of 16 match against Brazil is over,” NZZ wrote. “Maybe it’s better that way too.”
Blick reminded readers that the tournament should be remembered for the unexpected win against Spain, which it called “probably the biggest achievement in 105 years.”
“Now let’s get England on Sept. 7,” the paper wrote. “Our first opponent in qualifying for the European Championship.”
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Musings of a wire reporter in Geneva. Feel free to contact me with your questions about journalism, Switzerland, or anything else I write about on this blog.
