Embolo takes down the country of his birth
Breel emBolo hit the only goal as Switzerland’s World Cup campaign got off to a winning start against Cameroon. embolo — who was born in the west African country — scored three minutes after the break to secure victory in Group G, but his celebrations were muted. Swiss manager murat Yakin said: ‘We know his story, his past in Cameroon, and Breel, you can be friendly up to the kick-off and then afterwards they are going to be your opponents and we need you in our team.
‘You’ve got an opponent — of course he wants to score a goal for his team and he fulfilled his task, so we are really happy. ‘maybe 1-0 or 2-0 is not sufficient for my taste, maybe we could have scored more goals, but all in all we had a mature performance.’
Cameroon’s first World Cup since 2014 started the same way their last finals appearance ended, in defeat. In a game that lacked chances, Cameroon started the brighter. Ten minutes in Brentford forward Bryan mbeumo latched on to a long ball, before firing a shot at goalkeeper Yann Sommer whose parry fell into the path of Karl Toko-ekambi, but he could only blaze over from 10 yards out. Sommer was called into action minutes later, but the in-form forward eric Choupo-moting’s tepid shot was not enough to trouble the Borussia monchengladbach keeper after brilliant work spinning past manchester City defender manuel Akanji.
Yakin’s side were struggling to deal with the directness of the Cameroon attack throughout the first period, but should have gone ahead just before the interval. But Akanji’s header from five yards managed to pass wide of Andre onana’s goal. ‘Generally in football, when you’re dominating you need to hit the net,’ Cameroon boss rigobert Song said. ‘Yes, we had more opportunities than they did (in the first half) but we didn’t have that finishing touch. That was what made the difference.’ Switzerland were dominating without posing an immediate threat, but they found themselves ahead immediately after the half-time interval. Granit Xhaka and remo Freuler worked their way through the Cameroon midfield with ease and found Xherdan Shaqiri on the left, the winger cutting it back to the unmarked embolo who calmly smashed the ball past onana. After the goal Cameroon responded well, Choupo-moting once thwarted by Bundesliga counterpart Sommer.
The quality slowly began to degrade the longer the match went on, but euro 2020 quarterfinalists Switzerland held on.