They shoot dark horses, don’t they? Just like Turkey at the last Euros, Hungary have been so widely tipped as plausible outsiders that expectations have perhaps reached unreasonable levels. Like Turkey three years ago, Hungary began with a defeat and looked a long way from being a side capable of challenging.
For Switzerland, the opposite is true. For them, there could hardly have been a greater symbol of their unexpected urgency than the substitute Breel Embolo, who sustained a cruciate ligament injury in August, surging through in injury time, the strapping flying from his knee as he seized on Willi Orban’s misplaced header to lob the ball over Peter Gulacsi and seal the win. “Embolo’s ability to hold the ball up made us feel very safe,” said Murat Yakin, who praised Embolo’s commitment to get fit and his medical staff.
