It's Crunch Time

England have met Switzerland on 22 previous occasions, four of which are not recognised by the English FA. All four of those matches were English victories. From the remaining 18 games England have won 11, drawn four and three games were won by Switzerland.

Switzerland's only competitive victory was in a World Cup Qualifier in Basle, 1981. They last met in the European Championships in England, 1996, where they fought out a 1-1 draw.

For details of all England-Switzerland clashes have a look at this resource.

Personally, I think England will win this afternoon, then they can all start crowing again. Traditionally when they're up against it in the second group game they pull a result out of the hat, to keep them in the tournament, even if it's just a draw.

In the World Cup Finals in 86 and 90 they took draws in the second game against Morocco (where Ray Wilkins became only the 4th England player ever to be sent off) and the Republic of Ireland respectively, after they had opened with a loss to Portugal in the first instance and a draw with Holland in the latter. Two years ago they drew one all with Sweden in the opener and scraped past Argentina 1-0 with a Beckham penalty, in the second match.

In the European Championship of 1992 they followed a 0-0 with Denmark with a similar scorline against France. Four years later, after that draw with the Swiss, they of course went out and hammered Scotland 2-0. In 2000 they were up against it after losing 3-2 to Portugal, but beat Germany, with Alan Shearer getting the goal.

Only in 1988 did they contrive to lose all of their games.

Looking back it occurs to me that it never seems to be mentioned that England are poor starters in these tournaments. For some reason Italy have that reputation, yet they have only lost 1 of their last 11 opening matches in major finals.