England vs Switzerland: The Switzerland national team made their trip to Wembley to face England in a friendly fixture on Saturday. With both teams having qualified for the Qatar World Cup, they were in high spirits.
Embolo scored the first goal of the contest in the 22nd minute to give the visitors the lead. Luke Shaw, made things level as he scored towards the end of the first half.
Kane scored through a penalty in the 78th minute, to seal a 2-1 win for the Three Lions. The contest was closely fought throughout the 90 minutes. With only Kane’s penalty being able to separate both teams.
England vs Switzerland: Match report
Full-time score: England 2-1 Switzerland
England: Pickford (8), Walker-Peters (7), White (6), Coady (7), Guehi (7), Shaw (7), Henderson (6), Gallagher (8), Mount (6), Kane (7), Foden (7).
Subs: Rice (6), Mitchell (7), Sterling (6), Grealish (6), Bellingham (n/a), Watkins (n/a).
Scorers: Shaw 45+1’, Kane 78’.
Switzerland: Omlin (7), Widmer (6), Akanji (6), Frei (6), Rodriguez (7), Steffen (6), Xhaka (7), Shaqiri (7), Freuler (6), Vargas (7), Embolo (7).
Subs: Mbabu (6), Zuber (5), Sow (6), Zeqiri (6), Aebischer (n/a), Gavranovic (n/a).
Scorer: Embolo 22’.
Managers’ reaction
England manager, Gareth Southgate: “We’ll make changes, we think that’s the right thing to do.
“We want to keep all of the squad involved. I think that has been a strength for us. Players who come in perform well at the level and the team march on.
“They need to feel that we’ve got the confidence in them to go into any game and we’re also at a stage of the season where their load is heavy and we’ve got to make sure we try and navigate that in the best way possible.
“I think the whole thing was a really worthwhile exercise for us and that’s why you want that quality of opposition.
“We could take lower-level teams but you don’t learn anything and actually we want to be stretched, we need to be stretched. It puts your record at risk but that’s not important.
“We’re trying to do well in tournaments and I think with the Nations League as we’ll have had more competitive games than any previous generation, so that means sometimes you come unstuck but I think in the long-term you are better for it.”
Switzerland manager, Murat Yakin: “You can see with Xherdan now that he is in rhythm. He shows great enthusiasm for the game and was able to set very good accents, especially in the center position.
“He prepared excellently.
“Especially in the first half, Shaqiri was instrumental in our good performance. He had a few nice moves. That’s exactly what I want to see from Xherdan.
“In our system, it really comes into its own. We can look for him even more in the game.”
