Switzerland: Tired of beating the winners

[Pokechecker]

Originally Posted by Uncle Rotter

When was this?

2009 in Africa at the WJC U17. Our team did win not just because of defensive discipline, being lucky or relying on super goaltending, also not on brutal physical play. I did follow these games and our team was really skillwise top (not better than Brasil e.g. but also skillwise pretty close to the most skillful teams, I was very happy to notice this). It was also not because of lucky format or tableau because Switzerland did beat in this tournament - besides others - e.g. Brasil and Germany and in the final a for some reason physical dominating team from Nigeria.

This victory was really great!

It would be wrong to predict now WC-wins of the senior-team in future because this was just an exceptional age-group and unfortunately not the rule... but still... I guess Swiss football will be in the next 12 years alwasy a very serious contender for qualifying to the WC- and EC- final-tournaments and in the one or the other final tournament it could be realistic to qualify once for a 1/4-final I guess.

Thomas Roost
Central Scouting Europe / NHL

[torero]

Originally Posted by Uncle Rotter

When was this?

it was in end 2009. And it was an absolutely deserved success ... where Switzerland beat Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Colombia and Nigeria. Big teams and in a deserved manner.

It is the fruit of a new system put in place where they try to pinpoint talents at any age and follow them, advice them (parents) and give them opportunities to train with other talents. Many players are children of imigrants that are ... de facto Swiss. Seferovich, Ben Kalifa and Rodriguez are the new Swiss + the traditional Swiss names. Good training schools that are in no way inferior to other country's schools are also part of the receipe.

http://www.fifa.com/u17worldcup/index.html

[drew1234]

Originally Posted by TheNextOneX

I'm not disputing on why superstars names such as you mentions, prefer the NHL over the KHL. However you have to confess some big names did choose the KHL for moneys and there is no guarantee that Kovy will return in the NHL, and Malkin have said that he wants to win the Stanley cup before thinking going back to his homeland. Once his contract ends up, we'll see if he wants to play in the KHL. Ovechkin and Semin was approached by Dynamo but they have a lifetime contract with their franchise organizations. Ovechkin threaten to leave the NHL for the KHL if Bettman doesn't release NHL players for the Olympics in Sochi.

The NHL is overrated IMO because if you look at the Olympics in Torino and WHC where teams such as Italy,Germany, Belarus, Latvia with practicaly no NHL star, still manage to put a fight with Canada and other big nations, and lose by only a few goals...

Those so called "little nation" are now catching up with the so-called "big-nations" and they did with practicaly no NHL superstars.

And that's the reason why i think the NHL is overrated.

Anyone can win 1 game. look at the shot difference in those games? Canada could of had 100 teams that will easily compete with your 1 team. And proboly 90% of them will outplay the swiss. Anyone can win 1 game. Put together a 7 game series and lets see what happens? Trust me, they wouldnt be able to survive a being outshout 40 to 17 or whatever those games were every night and expect to be in the game.

Look at the world cup of football (soccer) and how close those games are, anyone can win. Swiss beat Spain but Spain won the cup and Swiss couldnt advance. What does that say?

In sports anyone can get the bounces going their way and they can pull off "upsets" its why its soo enjoyable. Sports that can be predicted are not fun unless you are watching it for pure domination.

[peachy89]

well, back to the topic:
you're so right torero. i'm tired, too.
but lets be more optimistic. (i guess it's the only thing we can do ) last world cup, the swiss hockey team beat italy clearly (not like 09 they only won 1:0 against france) they also beat lativa and that was a big step foreward. we were also able to made two upsets in beating the Czech and Canada.
it seems to be that our team is on the right road because they didn't just play defensive, they played offensiv and stood compact in the defence. i hope they play the same way at the next world cup and will be able to do a good result again. and i wonder what they'll be able when the best swiss players (who wants to play for switzerland) are in the team (last championship, over 15 players weren't able to play and a few other refused to play)