Switzerland have not reached a World Cup quarter-final since 1954. Seventy-two years, four generations of players, and a long list of last-16 exits later, Murat Yakin's side are finally back in the last eight. They got there in the manner that has come to define them: nil-nil against Colombia at BC Place in Vancouver, a shootout, and nerves that, for once, held.
Ruben Vargas settled it. Gregor Kobel won it. A curse that had trailed Swiss football for two decades was buried in a single evening.
For a country that has turned out good teams without ever quite forcing its way to the top table, this is new air. Switzerland had reached the last 16 at each of the previous three World Cups and gone no further. Yakin's brief was to break that ceiling, and he has done it in the most improbable fashion, from twelve yards.
Breaking a habit of losing
The dread was earned. Before this tournament Switzerland had won only one of their six penalty shootouts in all competitions, per ESPN, and their sole previous attempt at a World Cup ended in a loss to Ukraine in 2006. So when Manuel Akanji saw his kick saved and the sequence began to wobble, the old script seemed to be writing itself again.
It did not. Kobel guessed right on Cucho Hernandez and beat the ball away. Davinson Sanchez missed for Colombia. Up stepped Vargas, a substitute, to drill in the decisive spot-kick and send Switzerland through 4-3. ESPN called it the country's first shootout win at a World Cup. Two decades of misery from the spot, undone in the space of five kicks.
"We finally broke the curse," Yakin said. "I'm incredibly happy for everyone, the players, the staff, and the fans."
Akanji, who had missed, offered no gloss. "We didn't play that well, especially offensively, we were lacking a lot," he told ESPN. Both verdicts were fair. Switzerland were poor against Colombia and went through regardless. That, more than any single move, is the thread running through their run.
A defence that will not break
The foundation is at the back. Switzerland reached the last 16 for a fourth World Cup in a row by seeing off Algeria 2-0 in the round of 32, Breel Embolo striking in the 10th minute and Dan Ndoye adding the second a minute into the second half. Then came the goalless stalemate with Colombia. Two knockout ties, two clean sheets, and in Kobel a goalkeeper who has grown taller with every round. This has been a run built on shutting the door, not on fireworks.
It is not pretty. It has been brutally effective.
The group stage told the same story in a different key. Switzerland topped Group B unbeaten, opening with a 1-1 draw against Qatar before their meeting with 10-man Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted late. Tarik Muharemovic was sent off in the 80th minute for hauling down Embolo, and a match that had stayed stubbornly tight suddenly poured open. Johan Manzambi, off the bench, scored twice. Vargas had a hand in nearly everything. Granit Xhaka thumped in a penalty at 90+7 to complete a 4-1 win. Five goals in the closing half hour, from a side that had spent an hour keeping the door shut.
Yakin's patient build
None of this is accidental. Yakin has shaped a team that knows precisely what it is: awkward to beat, at ease without the ball, and deep enough that the bench keeps deciding matches. Vargas scored the winning penalty against Colombia and tortured Bosnia. Manzambi turned a group game inside twenty minutes. Embolo leads the line, Ndoye stretches it, and Xhaka sits at the centre of it all, captain, metronome, and the man who takes the penalty when one has to be taken.
Xhaka is the one constant, the player who has carried Switzerland through the lean years and now through the best of them. There is no single star hauling this side forward, which is rather the point. They defend as a block, they punish late, and, as of the Colombia night, they can win from twelve yards too. There is nothing flashy about how Yakin has built this. There has not needed to be.
Argentina, Messi and Kansas City
The prize is the sternest examination available. Switzerland head to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on Saturday to face the holders, Argentina, and Lionel Messi. On paper it is a gulf. On the evidence of the past three weeks, though, Yakin's players are unlikely to carry themselves like a side content just to be there.
The template for an upset is written into their tournament: keep it tight, trust Kobel, and back the bench to conjure a moment. Whether that is enough against the world champions is another matter entirely.
Win or lose, Switzerland have already gone where no Swiss team has since 1954: into the last eight, with a first World Cup shootout behind them and the old curse lifted. What Kansas City holds is the open question. For a country that has waited 72 years to ask it, that is a fair place to be.
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