Switzerland and Czech Republic vie for final spot

Group A winners Switzerland enter their semi-final against the Czech Republic aiming to maintain their 100% winning record at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship.

• Pierluigi Tami's Swiss side were the only team not to drop a point in the first phase of the U21 finals and also became only the second side after France in 2007 to reach the semi-finals without conceding a goal.

• Their Czech opponents had fortune on their side in claiming second place in Group B with six points. They faced an early exit going into the final minutes of their third game against England as they trailed to a Danny Welbeck goal but produced a remarkable turnaround to win 2-1 through goals from substitutes Jan Chramosta and Tomáš Pekhart. "A lucky ending" was coach Jakub Dovalil's summation.

Match background
• This is the nations' third competitive match at U21 level and it took a penalty shoot-out to separate them after their previous encounters in a play-off to qualify for the 2004 U21 finals.

• The Swiss emerged victorious after overturning a 2-1 home defeat in Basel on 15 November 2003 with an identical success in Ostrava four days later and then prevailing 4-3 on penalties.

• Switzerland's comeback was all the more impressive for the fact that they conceded the first goal of the second leg to Jiří Koubský and then lost Marco Streller to a red card after 64 minutes. They hit back, however, through Mario Eggimann (76) and a Koubský own goal (85) to level the aggregate scores and force extra time.

• The lineups for that most recent U21 meeting were:
Czech Republic: Laštůvka, Vidlička, Hübschman, Koubský, Bureš, Musil, (Slepička 68), Polák, Plašil, Trojan (Kolář 87), Mario Lička (Lafata 106), Svěrkoš.

Switzerland: Wölfli, P Degen, Schwegler, Eggimann, Jaggy, Lichtsteiner (D Degen 67), Rochat, Baumann (Nef 65), Barnetta, Streller, Vonlanthen (Cerrone 105).

• The countries have also contested two U21 friendlies, the Czech Republic winning 3-0 in Zurich in April 2002 and earning a 1-1 draw in Winterthur in April 1994.

• The Czechs hold the upper hand at senior international level with a record of three wins and one defeat in four meetings. The most recent encounter brought a 1-0 Czech victory in Basel at UEFA EURO 2008, Václav Svěrkoš the scorer.

• Players from both sides were involved when Switzerland beat the Czech Republic 1-0 in a UEFA European U19 Championship elite round fixture in Donetsk on 28 May 2006.

• Yann Sommer and Daniel Pavlović appeared for the Swiss and Marek Suchý and Milan Černý for the Czechs, while Marcel Gecov stepped off the bench in the 70th minute. Despite losing, the Czech Republic still won the group ahead of Ukraine and Switzerland in a three-way tie-break and advanced to the semi-finals in Poland.

• The nations also met on 9 September 2009 in a U17 qualifying round game in Gordorskoi, Belarus. The Czech Republic won 4-0 but both teams went through and reached the final tournament.

• Going further back, Dovalil was in charge of the Czech U16 side beaten 2-1 by Switzerland at a tournament in Ballymena, Northern Ireland in April 2005. Radim Řezník, Ondřej Mazuch and Tomáš Pekhart played in the Czech Republic side, while Jonathan Rossini and Fabian Frei played for Switzerland. An own goal by Řezník decided the contest.

• Nassim Ben Khalifa and Timm Klose will play alongside Pekhart at 1. FC Nürnberg in the coming season. Mario Gavranović and Jan Morávek were colleagues at FC Schalke 04 in the second half of the 2009/10 season.

• This is the second U21 semi-final for both teams and the Swiss are seeking their first final appearance having suffered a 2-0 loss to France at this stage in 2002. Ironically, that was the same year of the Czechs' only previous semi-final, when they defeated Italy 3-2 en route to claiming the title in Switzerland.

• They did so by beating France 3-1 on penalties in the only shoot-out either country has contested in UEFA U21 competition.

• Squad members eligible to play in the 2011/13 UEFA European Under-21 Championship:
Czech Republic – Jan Chramosta, Václav Kadlec, Jan Lecjaks, Lukáš Mareček, Marek Štěch
Switzerland – Amir Abrashi, François Affolter, Nassim Ben Khalifa, Fabio Daprelà, Pajtim Kasami, Philippe Koch, Admir Mehmedi, Xherdan Shaquiri, Benjamin Siegrist, Granit Xhaka

Switzerland news
• Switzerland's record in the group stage augurs well. In their two previous tournament wins, they achieved a similar clean sweep in the group stage – at the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2009 and the UEFA European U17 Championship in 2002.

• That latter campaign was in Denmark and like now, the Swiss scored one, two and three goals in group matches – albeit in a different order nine years ago.

• Switzerland's Benjamin Siegrist, Nassim Ben Khalifa, Pajtim Kasami and Granit Xhaka were in their country's U17 World Cup-winning squad.

• Xhaka, who is suspended on Wednesday, scored for Switzerland's U19s in a 3-0 friendly win against the Czech Republic in September last year. Pierluigi Tami has said that one of Amir Abrashi, Moreno Costanzo and Xavier Hochstrasser will deputise.

• Teams are allowed three players older than the 1989 birth date cut-off for the Olympics. "Sommer and Lustenberger would definitely be there," said coach Tami, leaving one over-age place still available.

• The squad celebrated beating Belarus by going out in Hobro on Saturday night.

• They had a light training session at Sunday lunchtime and reported no injury problems. On Monday, they had a full training session in the afternoon then spent the evening analysing DVDs of the Czech Republic.

• Also on Monday, FC Basel 1893 confirmed that Fabian Frei would return to the club after a two-season loan at FC St Gallen.

• The Swiss squad are whiling away their spare time playing games of table tennis and table football.

Czech Republic news
• The squad practised penalties in training on Monday morning before making the hour-long journey to Aarhus to have a look around the coastal city in the afternoon.

• National team coach Michal Bílek, national team manager Vladimír Šmicer and Football Association of the Czech Republic (ČMFS) president Ivan Hašek were all present to see Sunday's victory against England.

• Coach Jakub Dovalil sent on substitute Chramosta, who scored the Czechs' crucial equaliser in Viborg, without having him warm up so the FK Mladá Boleslav striker would not be nervous.

• Chramosta scored the decisive penalty in the shoot-out that won his club the Czech Cup last season at the expense of SK Sigma Olomouc, who had current U21 squad member Tomáš Hořava in their ranks.

• Nine players who have come through the ranks of SK Slavia Praha are in the squad: Marcel Gecov, Jan Kovařík, Bořek Dočkal, Milan Černý, Lukáš Vácha, Tomáš Pekhart, Jan Hošek, Jan Hanuš and Marek Suchý. Coach Dovalil also started out at the Prague club, reaching the reserve team as a player, and later worked in their coaching system.