Despite being knocked out against England, Murat Yakin is proud of what the Swiss national team has achieved in recent weeks.
As Murat Yakin strides to the podium in the catacombs of the Düsseldorf stadium, around 70 minutes have passed since that one moment that shattered the Swiss national team's dreams of a first European Championship semi-final: Trent Alexander-Arnold runs up and shoots the fifth penalty past Yann Sommer into the left corner of the goal and England into fortune.
The engine of the Swiss team bus, which is waiting just a few meters away, is already running and Yakin would probably much rather be sitting in it than in front of a microphone and a crowd of media representatives who want to hear the reasons why Switzerland failed to reach the penalty shoot-out of a European Championship quarter-final again, as they did in 2021.
The one moment
"It hurts a lot," says Yakin first. "For the boys, but also for the whole nation that supported us." The Swiss fans have once again traveled to Düsseldorf in large numbers. They experienced an emotional high when Breel Embolo scored from close range, and two lows after Bukayo Saka equalized and the penalty shoot-out was lost.
This moment, when Saka moved into the middle in the 80th minute and beat Yann Sommer with a long-range shot - it is the only one in the coach's notebook with the remark "not well defended". Otherwise, Yakin says: "We were good in the game and didn't concede much."
The 49-year-old seems reflective, even though the incident that brought Switzerland's trip to Germany to an abrupt end was not so long ago. Yakin says that he is much more annoyed that his team did not take any of the chances they had after conceding the equalizer in extra time than that they lost the penalty shoot-out. He thinks of Zeki Amdouni's shot, Fabian Schär's shot, the cross that Denis Zakaria narrowly missed or, of course, Xherdan Shaqiri's corner kick in the 117th minute that landed on the crossbar.
The few centimeters
It would have been a typical "Shaqiri moment". A moment in which Yakin, as coach, could have patted himself on the back again for ordering the man for the magic moments onto the pitch for the last few minutes.
A few centimeters were missing. But Yakin doesn't want to leave Germany as a ragamuffin. He says: "After a tournament like this, I can't be angry with my players. We don't have to blame ourselves. I'm very proud of this team and this European Championship campaign. There has to be a loser in a penalty shoot-out. Unfortunately, that was us today."
SDA
