The big question before Switzerland’s European Championship round of 16 was: who will replace the suspended Silvan Widmer on the right side? Now Fabian Rieder has another chance. We’ll keep you up to date on the game here in the live ticker.
Directly before the match against Italy, the Swiss national coach Murat Yakin does the Mexican wave with the fans.
Clemens Bilan / EPA
(sda) The Swiss national coach Murat Yakin is relying on an offensive variant in the round of 16 against Italy. Dan Ndoye and Fabian Rieder will play on the right side.
Who will replace the suspended Silvan Widmer on the right? That was the big question regarding the Swiss line-up for the match against Italy. Yakin originally put Leonidas Stergiou in the position and argued that he had called him up as a replacement for Widmer. At the press conference the day before the match, the coach then mentioned a second variant that had been rehearsed. And this one obviously convinced him more.
It seems that Dan Ndoye, who has played a more offensive role so far, is moving back a position. This is not new to him. In the four test matches before the European Championship, Ndoye was always used in the midfield four, but on the left. Whether this will be the case again and Michel Aebischer will move to the right remains to be seen. Captain Granit Xhaka and Remo Freuler will play in the center as usual.
Switzerland will start the attack against Italy with the trio Fabian Rieder, Breel Embolo and Ruben Vargas. In defence, everything will remain the same as in the first three games: Fabian Schär, Manuel Akanji and Ricardo Rodriguez have been reliable so far. There are no changes between the posts either, so Yann Sommer, who won the Italian championship with Inter, will face some of his teammates.
The Swiss lineup: Summer; Schar, Akanji, Rodriguez; Ndoye, Freuler, Xhaka, Aebischer; Rieder, Vargas; embolus.
The Italian lineup: Donnarumma; Di Lorenzo, Mancini, Bastoni, Darmian; Cristante, Fagioli, Barella; Chiesa, Scamacca, El Shaarawy.
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Fabian Rieder gets his chance again in a big finals match.
Peter Klaunzer / Keystone
