World Cup 2014/Switzerland

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This article is about the Swiss national football team at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Switzerland participated in the final round for the tenth time and in a final round in South America for the third time. For the final round in 1978 in South America, Switzerland was not qualified and did not participate in the first 1930.

Qualification
Switzerland was unbeaten in its qualifying group E with seven victories – four away wins – and three draws in first place. Opponents were Iceland, Slovenia, Norway, Albania and Cyprus. The second-placed Icelandic team failed in the playoff games against Croatia.

Table

Game results

In total, Ottmar Hitzfeld used 26 players. No player was used in all games. Seven players made 9 out of 10 games. With Josip Drmić, Pajtim Kasami, Michael Lang, Fabian Schär and Haris Seferović, five newcomers came to their first competitive games during qualifying, with Drmić and Kasami debuting directly at a competitive game. The best scorer with three goals was Fabian Schär, nine other players contributed the remaining goals. Ottmar Hitzfeld had a lucky hand in his substitutions: he changed to Norway on 12 October 2012 in the 71st. One minute Mario Gavranović, who scored 1-0 eight minutes later and on the 8th. June 2013 in the 73rd minute Haris Seferović, who scored 1-0 in the 90th minute. The richest game in the series on 6. In September 2013 against the strongest competitor Iceland until then, the Swiss had to accept the goal for the 4-4 compensation in the first minute of the stoppage time.

Preparation
Test matches:
5 March in St. Gallen against Croatia: 2:2 (goal scorer for Switzerland: Drmić/34 and 40)
30 May in Lucerne against Jamaica: 1-0 (goal scorer: Drmić/84.)
June 3 in Lucerne for the first time against Peru: 2:0 (goalscorers: Lichtsteiner/78. and Shaqiri/84.)

Cadre
Below is the squad of Switzerland for the World Cup listed. Ten players were also in the 2010 squad, four of them as well as Blerim Džemaili and Johan Djourou also in the squad for the 2006 World Cup, of which Tranquillo Barnetta participated in the last seven World Cup games, but was not used at the 2014 World Cup.

(*) only the matches and goals that were completed or scored before the start of the World Cup.

Final round

Group phase

In the case of the In 2013, Switzerland was set as group head for the first time in the history of the World Cups due to its position in the FIFA World Rankings of October 2013 and was drawn in Group E. Even at the home World Cup in 1954, Switzerland was not set and had to play against the set English and Italians. The winners were former world champions France, Ecuador and Honduras. France is the fifth most frequent opponent in Switzerland and was already at the 2006 World Cup opponent in the group stage, as