Finns didn’t want to win this way...
ONLY ERIKSEN’S HEALTH COUNTS
FINLAND waited for this moment for so long. They won’t have wanted it to come like this, though.
Their celebrations were rightly muted.
Joel Pohjanpalo scored their first-ever goal at a major tournament with what was their first effort in the competition.
It came in the 59th minute against Denmark. A moment they won’t forget for more than one reason.
It was a night when the scoreline didn’t really matter. Only the health of Christian Eriksen counted.
In the 42nd minute of the opening Group B game in
Copenhagen, the scene was very different. There was no concern about football then.
Eriksen was on the floor being given CPR as his Danish teammates stood arm in arm around the scene as tears flowed in the Parken Stadium.
You feared the worst when he was taken away on a stretcher with white sheets giving him privacy.
The world waited for news that he was OK. It would come that he was awake and breathing later on.
Somehow then within two hours of the Inter midfielder collapsing on the pitch, the match resumed.
Both sets of players wanted to finish the game.
Brave beyond the call of duty. Especially for the Danes, who just 100 minutes earlier had circled their team-mate as medics saved his life.
Eriksen had spoken to them from his hospital bed, it was claimed. They went out to play for him.
They had controlled the game for the first 40 minutes.
Understandably after the restart, they were not the same outfit.
Every error was rightly written off. It was hard to motivate yourself to watch the match, never mind play in it.
Nobody is going to criticise Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg for missing a penalty. Not after this.
Nor question Kasper Schmeichel when he could have saved Pohjanpalo’s header. The Leicester
when they face the Azzurri in the Italian capital on Sunday.
But Rob Page (left) and his men have at least given themselves a platform and, crucially, the unity and sense of pride the whole of Wales felt in its footballers five years ago will now be building again nicely.
Unsurprisingly, the man whose goal earned the point was Kieffer Moore.
Page has tried a variety of systems since replacing Ryan Giggs, one of which saw Aaron
Ramsey deployed as a false nine. But when it came to the crunch of tournament football, the Wales caretaker boss went with Bale and Dan James either side of Moore, and the big man duly delivered.
None of that trio saw anything like as much of the ball as Wales fans would have liked.
Not at the end of the pitch they’d have liked, anyway.
But they ultimately came up trumps and they will now have a few more days to acclimatise further still to the Azerbaijani heat that made life so difficult for them.
The closest Wales came in the first half was from Moore, whose fine header from James’ cross needed a good save from
Yann Sommer. Fabian Schar had the best effort at the other end and what a clever finish his flicked volley between the legs would have been had Ward not reacted well to save.
Switzerland dictated the pace with Wales struggling to get out of their half.
After the break, Breel Embolo’s effort was saved well by Ward, but from the resulting corner he headed Switzerland ahead.
Kevin Mbabu ought to have put the game beyond doubt but drilled wide.
As the Swiss began to wilt, Moore’s header from Joe Morrell’s cross gave hope to every Welsh fan from Britain to Baku that the Dragon was stirring again.
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For an hour, 500 defiant Wales fans could have been forgiven for wishing they’d stayed home