Key events
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HALF TIME: Scotland 1-1 Switzerland
Scotland led for just 13 minutes. But what a time it was to be alive. Steve Clarke’s side have held their own against their more accomplished opponents.
45 min +2: A diminuendo end to the half.
45 min: There will be three added minutes.
44 min: Tell you what, Ndoye wasn’t offside by much before finding the net back then. At first glance he looked well off as he took down Akanji’s header, but Hendry was sitting deep in the middle. An inch or two saved Scotland, nothing more. But then, offside is offside.
42 min: Ndoye probes down the left and cuts back for Xhaka, who looks first time for the top-right corner. Gunn extends to push the shot away from danger.
41 min: McTominay hits it long. Adams rises at the far stick but can’t get anything meaningful on the ball. Sommer gathers.
40 min: Tierney looks long for Robertson down the left. Akanji is forced to knock out for a corner. It’ll be Scotland’s third of the match.
38 min: In it goes. Hendry wins a header but the whistle goes to relieve the pressure on the Swiss. Too much pushing and shoving.
37 min: Some sheer persistence from Adams annoys Rodriguez enough into shipping possession. Then Freuler bowls him over from behind, and this is a free kick 30 yards out, off to the right. McTominay to swing it into the mixer.
36 min: Scotland have settled a bit. A few passes in the midfield. Hey, it’s all relative. And on that subject, here’s Simon McMahon: “Forget the single malts, I think I might need a double malt before half time, Scott. And I’ve a feeling I’ll be consuming Alan Partridge-esque quantities of Toblerone before the end.”
34 min: Gilmour attempts to power past Xhaka but is bowled over. He wants the free kick, but he’s not getting one. “Congrats to Scotland’s goal machine,” begins Peter Oh. “With so many young whippersnappers dominating attention these days, it’s good to see an OG get some love.”
33 min: Scotland half clear the corner. Akanji heads it back in. Ndoye picks up possession and rounds Gunn, who is on walkabout, before hooking into the unguarded net. But the flag pops up for offside. Correctly, too, and there might have been a hand used also. For a second, though Scottish hearts were in mouths.
32 min: Vargas drives at the Scottish defence down the inside-left channel. He feeds Ndoye on the overlap. Ndoye chops across McGregor before curling towards the top right. Gunn sticks out a strong arm to turn around the post for a corner. And from that …
31 min: Gilmour starts off on a run down the right touchline and is unceremoniously upended by a sliding Rodriguez, who goes into the book.
30 min: Vargas gets in down the left and crosses low for Ndoye. McTominay reads the danger, intercepts, then turns calmly to play out from the back. Scotland look slightly shaken after conceding the equaliser, so hopefully that’s calmed them down a little.
28 min: It’s fair to say that had been coming. The Swiss had won a series of corners, and seconds before the goal, a caption flashed up announcing that they’d enjoyed 72 percent of possession to date. It’s a wonderful response to falling behind by the Swiss, and their tails are now up, Widmer aiming a rising shot at the top-right corner. It’s not far wide and only inches too high.
GOAL! Scotland 1-1 Switzerland (Shaqiri 26)
Yet another long-range screamer at Euro 2024! Ralston plays a blind pass infield from the Scottish right flank. Bad idea. Shaqiri meets it on the left-hand edge of the Scotland D and hits it first time, an inswinging curler that plants into the top-left corner, giving Gunn no chance! What a goal that was! But what a mistake by Ralston.
24 min: Schar slips a cute pass down the inside-right channel to nearly release Widmer. Robertson slides in to clear, and the flag goes up anyway, but the Swiss are beginning to boss this match, despite the scoreline. “I think I still had goose bumps after watching Flower of Scotland when that goal went in,” writes Brad McMillan. “As 1,055 people said before me on Twitter, it made me proud to be Scottish, and I’m English!”
22 min: Switzerland are on top right now. Yet another corner conceded as Widmer barrels down the right, nearly getting past Robertson. Hanley deals with this one, but Scotland can’t keep conceding set pieces like this, surely.
21 min: Ralston is fine to continue after some patching up.
19 min: Now then, Uefa have awarded Fabian Schär the own goal. That’s ludicrous. McTominay’s shot was on target, and while Schar took a wild swipe at clearing it, punting it backwards and into his own net, he only did so in attempting to stop a goalbound shot. So naw. However, as things stand, Scotland’s leading all-time scorer in European Championship finals is officially Own Goal (2).
18 min: Vargas makes some good ground down the left and his low fizzing shot-cum-cross is deflected into the side netting by Robertson. Corner. Vargas takes, and Ralston takes a whack in clearing it. Play stops.
16 min: McTominay heads this one clear as well. But there’s to be no counter, as Rodriguez has a whack from distance. Always wide right.
15 min: If anyone was going to score for Scotland, it was surely their qualification goal machine Scott McTominay. He started the move as well by clearing the corner. Wow. Now then, can lightning strike twice, because Tierney has just replicated Hendry’s error just before the goal, clumping carelessly wide right of his own goal. Another Swiss corner coming up.
GOAL! Scotland 1-0 Switzerland (McTominay 13)
… Scotland break upfield. McTominay’s header clears the Swiss corner. Robertson drives down the inside-left channel and slips in McGregor on the overlap. McGregor enters the box and puts on the brakes. He pulls back for McTominay, on the left-hand edge of the D. He shoots. The ball takes a huge deflection off Schar, who was attempting to boot clear, only to shank into the top-left corner. But that’s McTominay’s goal!
12 min: Hendry shanks a backpass wide right of goal for a Switzerland corner. Extremely careless. And from the corner …
11 min: It’s all a bit scrappy at the moment. First Gilmour passes the ball out of play near his own box, then Vargas wastes the opportunity to put pressure on Scotland by carelessly running it out for a throw himself. Onwards and upwards.
9 min: A speculative ball down the Swiss right. Hanley ushers it out of play under pressure from Widmer, only to fall on the ball as it crosses the byline. It should be a corner, but neither referee nor linesman spots the error and Scotland get away with it. Goal kick.
8 min: Switzerland get their foot on the ball for the first time since the kick-off. Some patient passing. But then Shaqiri ships possession to McTominay, who attempts to slip Adams clear down the middle. Rodriguez slides in to intercept.
6 min: Hanley’s loose pass out from the back is pounced on by Vargas, but the Swiss miscontrols and what looked like a chance to launch a dangerous counter is gone. “My bet’s on Widmer to join that illustrious scoring list,” writes Phil West, a crack you can parse in more than one way.
4 min: McTominay whips this one higher, but it’s an easy pick for Sommer in the Swiss goal. A decent front-foot start by the Scots, though. Exactly what they need in the wake of that cowrin, tim’rous performance against Germany.
3 min: McTominay hits it flat and can’t beat the first man, falling over as he does so, putting the tin lid on it. But the ball sails out for a throw, which Tierney launches long. Adams and Robertson cause enough hassle in the box to win another corner. McTominay to take this one, too.
2 min: Robertson takes a quick throw down the left flank and McGinn wins a corner off Akanji. McTominay to take.
1 min: Almost immediately, a footrace down the Swiss left between Ndoye and Tierney. The Scottish defender wins this one, but only just, and only because he’s wily enough to draw a foul. This could be a battle to watch.
Scotland get the ball rolling. What an atmosphere! It’s not quite at Turkey-Georgia levels, but it’s something all right.
The teams are out! Scotland in their famous dark blue, Switzerland in second-choice white. The national anthems are belted out: hymns to radiant morning skies growing red, of fighting for your wee bit hill and glen and sending folk homeward tae think again. The latter positively ringing around the Müngersdorfer Stadion. Marvellous! “On most days a single malt will win over a slab of Toblerone,” notes Krishna Moorthy, pouring everyone a 43.8%ABV drop of hope. We’ll be off in a minute.
Pennant watch. Here are the commemorative trinkets Andrew Robertson and Granit Xhaka will be handing over before kick-off. Have to say, without any bias, the Scottish one is a thing of timeless grace and beauty …
… whereas the Swiss effort has a real quickly-cobbled-together, will-this-do vibe. The worry is, of course, that we’ll be using exactly the same phrases to describe the teams later, just not necessarily assigned to the same countries. Anyway, good luck everyone.
Steve Clarke talks to the BBC. “It was always our intention to start Billy Gilmour in this game, and that’s why he starts … the only difference between any other games is it’s a Friday-Wednesday build-up as opposed to normally Saturday-Wednesday … that’s all! … we do the same things … work the same way … tonight hopefully you’ll see the real Scotland on the pitch … we have to play better … we have to do better … we believe if we play to the best of our abilities we’ll get something from the game.”
Here is the complete unabridged all-time list of goalscorers for Scotland at the European Championship finals. It’s probably time something was done about this.
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Paul McStay (v Commonwealth of Independent States, Euro 92)
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Brian McClair (v Commonwealth of Independent States, Euro 92)
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Gary McAllister (v Commonwealth of Independent States, Euro 92)
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Ally McCoist (v Switzerland, Euro 96)
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Callum McGregor (v Croatia, Euro 2020)
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Antonio Rudiger (v Scotland, Euro 2024)
The other Group A game finished in a 2-0 win for hosts Germany over Hungary. Let Barry Glendenning take you on a trip …
… and all of that means Germany have qualified for the knockout phase. The Swiss can join them tonight with a win, though a draw would almost certainly prove to be enough to see them through when it all comes down, one way or another. Scotland won’t be out if they lose tonight, but they’d be seriously pushing their luck, especially if their goal difference takes another hammering, compromising any chances of squeaking through with one of the best third-placed finishes. However if they can get something, anything, from tonight’s game, they’ll go into Sunday night’s showdown with the Hungarians still brimful of hope.
The history books don’t give us too much of a hint about what may happen tonight. Alternatively, they can tell you whatever you want to hear. Scotland and Switzerland haven’t met for 18 years, since the Swiss won a Hampden Park friendly 3-1 in 2006. But the last time the teams met competitively, at Villa Park during Euro 96, Ally McCoist’s 37th-minute piledriver proved decisive. It wasn’t enough to get the Scots out of the group, of course; it still stands as the last winner scored by Scotland at any tournament (and much as we’d like to, we just can’t count the 2006 Kirin Cup). So it’s swings and roundabouts … even when it comes down to the broader historical sweep, with Scotland winning five of their first six fixtures against Switzerland (between 1931 and 1976) but only winning two of the subsequent eight (losing three). But whichever way you spin it, one thing is true: at least there’s no heavy baggage here.
Scotland make two changes to the side that started the 5-1 opening-night capitulation against Germany. One of them is enforced: Grant Hanley comes in at the back for the suspended Ryan Porteous. The other is tactical: Billy Gilmour replaces Ryan Christie to bolster the midfield.
Switzerland make one change to their starting XI in the wake of their 3-1 win over Hungary. The Powercube is back: Xherdan Shaqiri replaces Kwadwo Duah in attack.
The teams
Scotland: Gunn, Hendry, Hanley, Tierney, Ralston, Gilmour, McGregor, Robertson, McTominay, Adams, McGinn.
Subs: Shankland, Christie, Kelly, Cooper, Armstrong, Morgan, Conway, Jack, Clark, McCrorie, McLean, Taylor, Forrest, McKenna.
Switzerland: Sommer, Schar, Akanji, Rodriguez, Widmer, Freuler, Xhaka, Aebischer, Shaqiri, Vargas, Ndoye.
Subs: Stergiou, Elvedi, Embolo, Okafor, Steffen, Mvogo, Zesiger, Sierro, Duah, Kobel, Jashari, Amdouni, Rieder.
Referee: Ivan Kruzliak (Slovakia).
Preamble
Well, that first game didn’t go to plan. Steve Clarke and his men begin their quest to make amends at 8pm BST. It’s on.
