GROUP A/Switzerland 0 Czech Republic 1:IT'S A MEASURE of the nation's surprising sense of perspective that life appeared to be proceeding normally across Switzerland last night after what can only be described as a weekend of sporting calamity. More than once the people here have looked on as all of Europe tore itself apart around them but having avoided any involvement and with no natural disasters to contend with they could have been forgiven for taking the news from Basle and Paris fairly badly over the past couple of days.
Instead, as it emerged that Alexander Frei will miss the rest of the European Championships with the knee ligament injury he sustained in Saturday's narrow defeat to the Czechs and then Roger Federer was badly beaten yet again by Rafael Nadal in the final of the French Open, it was hard to find evidence of a nation in despair.
Federer's defeat, his fourth in a row to the Spaniard in Paris, was not entirely unexpected, of course, but there had been high hopes the football team might qualify for the quarter-finals of these championships.
Now, there is an acceptance that this loss combined with Frei's injury means that that is now something of a long shot with even some players conceding they are now up against it.
"It's a shock, a disaster to lose our captain in the first game," said Kobi Kuhn afterwards as he struggled to find an upside to the situation. "He's an important player, a goal getter but I have already told the team that the looking back is over. It doesn't help us to look back. We have to look ahead to our next match which we will just have to win without Alex."
Quite how they will do that remains to be seen for Frei looked comfortably their most threatening player on Saturday until what looked a rather innocuous challenge by Zdenek Grygera resulted in him partially rupturing the tendons in his left knee.
His distress was immediately obvious, with the 29-year-old, who missed the last of Switzerland's games in Portugal four years ago after receiving a ban for spitting at Steven Gerrard and had battled his way back from a season of injury problems, weeping as he lay on the ground receiving treatment.
Clearly, even then the leading Swiss goalscorer of all time knew his tournament was over and the hosts are probably a little fortunate to have Turkey in their next game on Wednesday when a win, however difficult it might prove to achieve, would haul them back into contention to qualify ahead of next Sunday's encounter with Portugal.
Lose again on Wednesday, of course, and this end of the tournament is bound to go just a little flat.
For the Czechs, on the other hand, the immediate future looks fairly bright, with the win putting them on course for qualification, although they will have to play a good deal better than they did here if they are going to come remotely close to bettering their semi-final showing of four years ago.
Their veteran coach Karel Bruckner politely dismissed the assertion they had played defensively. "You have to remember," he said, "we were playing against a host team that was losing for half of the second half."
Still, his side was disappointingly unadventurous through most of the period that preceded the goal, looking for most of the afternoon like the draw would have done them and being fortunate at the end that that was not what they had to make do with.
Bruckner started Jan Koller up front by himself but the giant striker was rather easily accounted for by Patrick Muller as the Swiss easily edged the contest in terms of chances created.
Koller's replacement, Vaclav Sverkos (this season's top scorer back in the Czech league) got the game's only goal 19 minutes from time after Grygera, who may not enjoy the reruns of him laughing as he walks away from the challenge on Frei, headed a partially cleared ball over the out-coming Swiss defence for the striker to run on to and finish smartly.
Frei's replacement also made a positive impact but crucially, he badly misdirected a free header shortly before the goal and repeatedly failed to get his crosses into the danger area.
In the 20 minutes that followed the goal the locals became completely dominant, with Petr Cech forced into one fine save, Johan Vonlanthen sending a follow-up shot crashing off the underside of the bar and the Italian referee turning down two penalty appeals.
On both occasions there was clearly a handball by Tomas Ujfalusi but neither appeared to involve intent and Roberto Roselli, who was roundly booed as he departed at the end of the game, did particularly well to resist the pressure to award the second one.
The organisers, meanwhile, might have been expected to avoid the yodelling and model cows that featured in the tournament's opening ceremony which preceded the game at the St Jakob-Park, a ground Irish fans would prefer to forget after the Republic's experiences there in recent years.
Cows and yodelling were both there in abundance, however, in a colourful affair that caused some mirth amongst visitors but clearly lifted local spirits before Sverkos arrived to dampen them again.
SWITZERLAND: Benaglio, Lichtsteiner (Vonlanthen 75), Muller, Senderos, Magnin, Behrami (Derdiyok 83), Inler, Gelson, Barnetta, Frei (Yakin 46), Streller. Subs not used: Zuberbuhler, Jakupovic, Djourou, Huggel, Cabanas, Grichting, Gygax, Spycher, Degen. Booked: Magnin, Vonlanthen, Barnetta.
CZECH REPUBLIC: Cech, Jankulovski, Rozehnal, Ujfalusi, Grygera, Plasil, Polak, Galasek, Jarolim (Kovac 87), Sionko (Vlcek 83), Koller (Sverkos 56). Subs Not Used: Blazek, Zitka, Fenin, Pospech, Kadlec, Baros, Matejovsky, Sivok, Skacel.
Referee: Roberto Rosetti (Italy).
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)