Brazil (Coutinho, 20) 1 -1 Switzerland (Zuber, 50)
Who doesn’t love to watch Brazil when it comes to the World Cup? That was going to be no different this year especially with Neymar leading the line in a very talented side. The Swiss wanting to spoil the party and the method in which they did so was rather disappointing to be brutally honest as they took turns to kick Neymar from start to finish, which meant hardly any flow in the game at all.
Brazil: Alisson, Danilo, Thiago Silva, Miranda, Marcelo (c), Paulinho, Casemiro, Coutinho, Willian, Gabriel Jesus, Neymar.
Switzerland: Yann Sommer, Stephan Lichtsteiner (c), Fabian Schar, Manuel Akanji, Ricardo Rodriguez, Valon Behrami, Granit Xhaka, Xherdan Shaqiri, Blerim Dzemaili, Steven Zuber, Haris Seferovic.
When you look at Brazil’s line up it certainly is a tough decision to try and decide which player is going to cause you the most problems due to the skill and attacking threat they offer. Even the centre back’s are fantastic with the ball at their feet and are wanting to play football. Therefore it was going to be an exciting game. Although that was actually pretty wrong despite the marvellous goal from Coutinho, Brazil were denied any space and time on the ball when the Switzerland players took turns to give away fouls mainly on Neymar but anyone quick seemed to be a target.
This was such a shame considering some of the best players were on offer to show the skills. Even the goal from a corner from Zuber it was debatable if it should have actually counted with the push leading up to him scoring. So this denied Brazil a win in the first game only taking a point, which I guess will make the group a little bit more interesting.
I guess the opening games are a little bit tricky, but we will have to hope that other teams don’t go for this tactic or it will be more like a game of American Football with the number of stoppages for all of the free kicks. The referees need to give a player an early yellow card to stop that type of cheating behaviour.
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