By now sufficient time has passed to reflection Switzerland’s exit yesterday. From a football point of view, on which I won’t dwell, I think the morning’s papers using words such as “debacle” are a little extreme. The Swiss are generally a pretty unsuccessful team, and the whether conditions were such a leveller yesterday that home advantage was negated.

Watching the game in the Zürich Fanzone, the atmosphere reminded me of the evening spent outside the Schokoladenmuseum in Cologne in 2006 as the Germans beat Poland in injury team. The crowd used the Portugal/Czech Rep game as a warm-up and thirst quencher so that by the time kick off came around, the atmosphere was electric.

As Switzerland scored a not completely deserved goal, relief rained down on city from the heavens above. Unfortunately for the Swiss, the metaphor increasingly became reality and the match became almost unplayable. To their credit, the crowd in the Fanzone tried to make a carnival atmosphere of the ridiculous conditions, with not an umbrella to be seen. 

It wasn’t long, however, before spirits were dampened considerably following the Turkish equaliser. Despite two hands on the header, the impressive Diego Benaglio was unable to get enough purchase on the ball to steer it wide of the post.

With minutes to go our group decided to take leave of the venue, only to find out on the way home that the Swiss had succumbed to defeat. Five days into the tournament, and already my host nation was “vorbei”. Soaked to the bone and with spirits saturated, I just hoped that the morning wouldn’t bring an atmosphere that was dismissive of the rest of the tournament. In any event, I had a trip to look forward to and this particular visit would bring me back to reality with sharp focus.