Week 2

The second set of matches produced a lot of encounters that looked spicy and you could see they were going to be close but the best game for me which produced the most excitement came from Group E, live in Salvador between Switzerland and France. Both teams were ranked highly at the start of the tournament and after this game you could see why.

Here are the two line ups chosen by each manager-

Switzerland-

1- Benaglio (GK)

2- Lichtsteiner

5- Von Bergen (Senderos)

8- Inler (C)

9- Seferovic (Drmic)

10- Xhaka

11- Behrami (Dzemaili)

13- Rodriguez

18- Mehmedi

20- Djourou

23- Shaqiri

France- 

1- Lloris (GK) (C) 

2- Debuchy 

3- Evra

4- Varane

5- Sakho (Koscielny)

6- Cabaye 

8- Valbuena (Griezmann)

9- Giroud (Pogba)

10- Benzema

14- Matuidi

18- Sissoko

France started the game very strongly and inside 17 minutes Olivier Giroud put France ahead and straight from the kick off France doubled their lead with a goal from Matuidi. The game had started to get slow and not much pace from either team was shown but a moment of magic saw Benzema get through but he was fouled by Djourou and France had a chance to increase their lead to three, But the Swiss goalkeeper guess the right way to make a good save. France however did stretch their lead when Valbuena sunk the Swiss fans hearts with a third goal just before half time. In the second half France once again started strong and it wasn't long before Karim Benzema made up for his penalty miss to take the lead to four on the 67th minute. The game was really rounded off when Sissoko made it five with just over 15 minutes left on the clock. The Swiss players though didn't let France embarrass them any further with two goals in the last 10 minutes with goals from Dzemaili and Xhaka but the damage was already done and France had virtually made their spot in the knockout stages confirmed. 

Olivier Giroud celebrates his opener for France with a strange type of celebrating

FT: SWITZERLAND 2-5 FRANCE