It was extremely interesting to watch Brazil v Switzerland yesterday, considering the fact that the worth of the South American side is up in the billions of euros, while the Swiss side cost peanuts. In fact the 34 year-old Switzerland captain Stephan Lichtsteiner has just arrived at Arsenal for nothing, so the Gunners didn’t have to win one jackpot from the bonus offers on slotsadviser.com, while his direct opponent yesterday Neymar Jr cost PSG a cool €222m fee when he arrived from Barcelona last summer. How many jackpots would you need to win to pay that sort of money!
But Lichtsteiner kept the Brazilian pretty quiet, and the new Gunner was very pleased with the way him and his team-mates kept the superstar in check during the game, although he admitted he was worried about picking up a booking or two. “It’s very difficult playing him.” said Lichtsteiner. “He’s fast, he’s technical, you need to keep up with him all the time because he’s dangerous. It’s a big challenge.
“And I was a little bit worried about the referee. Every time he fell down it was a whistle, a foul so that was a bit of a challenge.
“You think to yourself ‘don’t be too aggressive’ because every time he goes down it’s a foul. So, because of that, I had to be a bit careful.”
You certainly can’t knock our new signing for the cool way he dealt with Neymar, but the whole of the Brazilian side are packed with talent, and Lichtsteiner believes that it is the team spirit in the Swiss side that helped them to play together and contain their illustrious opponents. “We are a mix I think. We are physical and we defend well – but we also attack. We showed that.
“We knew Neymar was a danger so it was very good teamwork on the right side with Valon Behrami, Fabian Schaer and me closing him down.
“It was almost a perfect game. It’s important to have this teamwork in the next game because we’ll have new situations.
“Maybe it’s an advantage to play a big team like Brazil first in the group. Maybe they don’t know us that well, they don’t have the feeling for the tournament.
“The first game is never easy for a big team in the first game. But Switzerland have a good team – and we got a good point.”
They certainly do have a good team, despite the fact that the didn’t cost billions. Perhaps Arsenal are looking at this and are thinking of bringing in some more cheap “team players” like Lichtsteiner rather than splash out on individual geniuses that are never worth the ridiculous sums of money being bandied about…..