Hitzfeld laments lack of firepower as Swiss exit World Cup

BLOEMFONTEIN - After Switzerland’s goalless draw with Honduras sent both teams tumbling out of the World Cup, Ottmar Hitzfeld singled out his goalkeeper, Diego Benaglio, as the best Swiss player of the match.

But in a game that Switzerland needed to win by at least two goals, it was the strikers and other offensive players who should have shone Friday at Bloemfontein’s Free State Stadium, Hitzfeld said.

The 61-year-old German has had a highly successful career at the club level, steering Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich to European Cup victories.

But at the World Cup with Switzerland, he admitted falling short of his own expectations.

“I’m very disappointed because I had great ambition with this team. But in the end we did not have the stamina and the perseverance to overcome difficult situations,” he said.

It was a sad end to Switzerland’s World Cup campaign, which had started so promisingly with victory over favourites Spain. The team score only one goal in three matches.

“Having a good defence is not good enough, and while we played very well defensively we failed in attack,” Hitzfeld said.

In the upset over Spain and less successfully in their 1-0 defeat against Chile, the Swiss sat back and tried to pounce on the counter.

But the game against unheralded Honduras - losers in both their previous games - called for a different, attacking game plan, Hitzfeld said.

“We had a few days to prepare, and we implemented our new strategy in training, but then we failed to deliver,” he said.

“There was too much nervousness. In one attack we had five of our players against four of theirs, and we still did not know what to do with the ball.”