“We hope that the luck that we have been missing in the last few days will return,” said national team coach Murat Yakin the day before the home game against Spain in Geneva. But it wasn’t to be like that – at least in the early stages. After a few minutes, Breel Embolo demanded a hand penalty after a duel in the penalty area. Quite rightly so, as the TV pictures show. But neither the Dutch referee Serdar Gözübüyük nor the video referee saw it the same way. A wrong decision.
Yakin changed eight players compared to the starting XI against Portugal. The recently very faulty central defense was also completely reorganized with Manuel Akanji and Eray Cömert. However, the latter only needed 13 minutes to adapt to the defensive performance of the last two games. After a catastrophic bad pass at the edge of the penalty area, he launched the Spaniards himself. 1-0 for the guests through Pablo Sarabia.
As a result, the Spaniards controlled the game with their ball possession football, but hardly had any more chances. Switzerland, on the other hand, was mostly solid defensively, but could hardly set any more accents on the offensive in front of an almost sold-out crowd at the Stade de Genève.