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Switzerland’s best route to the quarter-finals at Euro 2024? A 35-year-old who had the season of his life

Switzerland’s best route to the quarter-finals at Euro 2024? A 35-year-old who had the season of his life

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There is an argument to be had that the Switzerland international who had the most impressive overall campaign – on a team-wide basis, as well as with their performances – will be playing in midfield and rightly wearing the captain’s armband. There’s another case to be made that the Swiss player who had the outright best individual season will, however, only be the national team’s third-choice goalkeeper this summer at Euro 2024.

By Karl Matchett

Gregor Kobel was nothing short of exceptional for Borussia Dortmund: largely overworked in the Bundesliga, excellent in helping them reach the Champions League final. He deserves his place on the plane to Germany without question, yet he also only has five caps to his name. Ahead of him might be Yvon Mvogo, who has nine, yet both will definitely be behind Yann Sommer.

If Granit Xhaka had the standout year in headline terms, helping Bayer Leverkusen to an unbeaten domestic season which included a league and cup double, Sommer’s year wasn’t far behind: Inter Milan stormed to the Serie A title, the 35-year-old goalkeeper at the heart of it and perhaps enjoying a career-best campaign himself.

While it’s subjective whether he or Kobel had the better 2023/24, there’s zero doubt who will start between the sticks – and Switzerland can count themselves very fortunate to have such talent available to them in goal.

Sommer, indeed, may well have been pushed to such heights to keep his place because of Kobel’s emergence and form – and so now both he and the Swiss team will benefit, and there’s every reason to believe that thanks to his own excellent standards this year, they have a magnificent chance not just of reaching the knockouts once more, but of causing a real upset along the way and quite possibly reaching the last eight.

After all, it’s not as though Switzerland are strangers to that stage. They’ve reached the last 16 at three straight World Cups, including Qatar 18 months ago, and while they reached the same point at Euro 2016, in 2020 – or a year later, to be accurate – they made it one step further, knocking out France on penalties and going close to doing the same to Spain. They have a formula which works, some standout players to rely on and plenty of experienced heads who can keep things going in tough moments.

All that’s required extra to get that additional step of success is that most elusive of footballing traits: elite performances on the big stage.

Enter Sommer.

Compare the Inter man around European leagues this season to other goalkeepers and he ranks better than 100% of them when it comes to both clean sheets and goals conceded. Of course that’s a team effort, not just down to Sommer, but being literally the best is not a bad starting point for an assessment.

Only 22 goals were conceded by Inter all year long, comfortably the best among Europe’s best leagues, and with Sommer playing 34 of 38 games his own actual record was 19 clean sheets and 19 conceded – one goal going past him every 161 minutes. That is, by any measure, remarkable.

Dig deeper and the impressive numbers pop out: he saved one penalty he faced and conceded two – that might come in handy in a couple of weeks – and tallied an 81% save percentage across the board – higher than 95% of Serie A stoppers. His distribution was exemplary, he made just one error leading to a goal all year and prevented a total of 6.62 goals across the league campaign, again in the top 95%.

And numbers can’t do justice to his confidence, his authority, his consistency.

Sommer is flying, his defence at club level well-set, organised, capable of protecting him but utterly trusting in the fact he’s there to do the job when called upon. If Switzerland manage to organise themselves to even two-thirds of that level, half their job is done.

Against Hungary, Scotland and only then Germany in the groups, the Swiss could seal their passage early. Don’t then bet against Sommer being an impassable barrier to the likes of Spain or Italy in the last-16; partly because he’s a fine keeper, partly because the Swiss have already shown they can do it…and partly because he just has to keep playing that well simply to keep Kobel on the bench.

(Cover image from IMAGO)

You can follow every game from Euro 2024 live with FotMob — featuring deep stats coverage, xG, and player ratings. Download the free app here.

Switzerland’s best route to the quarter-finals at Euro 2024? A 35-year-old who had the season of his life

There is an argument to be had that the Switzerland international who had the most impressive overall campaign – on a team-wide basis, as well as with their performances – will be playing in midfield and rightly wearing the captain’s armband. There’s another case to be made that the Swiss player who had the outright best individual season will, however, only be the national team’s third-choice goalkeeper this summer at Euro 2024.

By Karl Matchett

Gregor Kobel was nothing short of exceptional for Borussia Dortmund: largely overworked in the Bundesliga, excellent in helping them reach the Champions League final. He deserves his place on the plane to Germany without question, yet he also only has five caps to his name. Ahead of him might be Yvon Mvogo, who has nine, yet both will definitely be behind Yann Sommer.

If Granit Xhaka had the standout year in headline terms, helping Bayer Leverkusen to an unbeaten domestic season which included a league and cup double, Sommer’s year wasn’t far behind: Inter Milan stormed to the Serie A title, the 35-year-old goalkeeper at the heart of it and perhaps enjoying a career-best campaign himself.

While it’s subjective whether he or Kobel had the better 2023/24, there’s zero doubt who will start between the sticks – and Switzerland can count themselves very fortunate to have such talent available to them in goal.

Sommer, indeed, may well have been pushed to such heights to keep his place because of Kobel’s emergence and form – and so now both he and the Swiss team will benefit, and there’s every reason to believe that thanks to his own excellent standards this year, they have a magnificent chance not just of reaching the knockouts once more, but of causing a real upset along the way and quite possibly reaching the last eight.

After all, it’s not as though Switzerland are strangers to that stage. They’ve reached the last 16 at three straight World Cups, including Qatar 18 months ago, and while they reached the same point at Euro 2016, in 2020 – or a year later, to be accurate – they made it one step further, knocking out France on penalties and going close to doing the same to Spain. They have a formula which works, some standout players to rely on and plenty of experienced heads who can keep things going in tough moments.

All that’s required extra to get that additional step of success is that most elusive of footballing traits: elite performances on the big stage.

Enter Sommer.

Compare the Inter man around European leagues this season to other goalkeepers and he ranks better than 100% of them when it comes to both clean sheets and goals conceded. Of course that’s a team effort, not just down to Sommer, but being literally the best is not a bad starting point for an assessment.

Only 22 goals were conceded by Inter all year long, comfortably the best among Europe’s best leagues, and with Sommer playing 34 of 38 games his own actual record was 19 clean sheets and 19 conceded – one goal going past him every 161 minutes. That is, by any measure, remarkable.

Dig deeper and the impressive numbers pop out: he saved one penalty he faced and conceded two – that might come in handy in a couple of weeks – and tallied an 81% save percentage across the board – higher than 95% of Serie A stoppers. His distribution was exemplary, he made just one error leading to a goal all year and prevented a total of 6.62 goals across the league campaign, again in the top 95%.

And numbers can’t do justice to his confidence, his authority, his consistency.

Sommer is flying, his defence at club level well-set, organised, capable of protecting him but utterly trusting in the fact he’s there to do the job when called upon. If Switzerland manage to organise themselves to even two-thirds of that level, half their job is done.

Against Hungary, Scotland and only then Germany in the groups, the Swiss could seal their passage early. Don’t then bet against Sommer being an impassable barrier to the likes of Spain or Italy in the last-16; partly because he’s a fine keeper, partly because the Swiss have already shown they can do it…and partly because he just has to keep playing that well simply to keep Kobel on the bench.

(Cover image from IMAGO)

You can follow every game from Euro 2024 live with FotMob — featuring deep stats coverage, xG, and player ratings. Download the free app here.