Switzerland savour 'fantastic' Mehmedi goal
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
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A match Romania's Anghel Iordănescu regarded as a game of two halves, was the cue for Swiss coach Vladimir Petković to praise his defence and look towards the last 16.
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Vladimir Petković, Switzerland coach
It would be nice to finish top, of course. There would be a lot of prestige to do that against the host nation. But second or even third ... who knows what would work out easier in terms of the draw?
I didn't see our goal. I was looking to make a change at the time and I had my back to the action. I am told it was excellent and of course it was well deserved. Also, importantly today, our defence were excellent. OK, we gave away the penalty but other than that we didn't let them have too many chances.
Granit Xhaka, Switzerland midfielder and man of the match
The goal by [Admir] Mehmedi was fantastic. "Finally," I thought, "we've scored." We'd had so many possibilities, but it was a perfect strike. It doesn't happen every day, a goal like that. It was a great performance, but a shame we couldn't win.
Against France, we won't be able to create as many chances so we must finish better. But the reaction after we went a goal down was very good.
Anghel Iordănescu, Romania coach
We had two very different halves of football. In the first half, we controlled the ball and the game for some time. We had chances but we missed them. We could have won. The second half was dominated by the Swiss and we were under a lot of pressure. We lost two players because of injuries and that hurt us.
We're suffering physically. It's hard to play these games. We needed some new players in our starting XI. We were struggling in the second half. There were others I wanted to take off but I couldn't because of the injuries.
We have to win our next game [against Albania]. That's how I see it. But in this game we achieved what we wanted to. After the first half, I told the players to get the second goal and then protect the result, but we couldn't do it. The Swiss were winning lots of individual duels.