Iceland Women v Switzerland Women
Switzerland and Iceland both opened the tournament with defeat, but they probably feel very differently about those matches. While the Swiss went down 1-0 to Austria, despite being favourites to win the match, and will now have to cope without the suspended Rahel Kiwic after her red card. Iceland on the other hand were expected to be thumped by France, but eventually went down to a single goal and may even have grown in confidence from that result.
Only two places separate the pair in the FIFA world rankings, but Switzerland seem to have had the better time when facing sides of an equal ability in recent years. We looked at how these two have fared when playing sides ranked 10th-25th in the world to get a view of how things have been going for the pair.
Switzerland had a 56% win rate, losing just 19%, while Iceland won slightly fewer at 43% but lost twice as frequently – 38% of matches. It was an even more exaggerated picture when looking at goals for and against – the Swiss scored 33, conceding 19, while Iceland scored just 16, and leaked 20 at the other end.
So if we fancy Switzerland here, how much should Iceland’s close match with France affect our thinking? Well, while it was close on paper, and Iceland could have nicked a goal for a hugely impressive draw, the stats suggest it wasn’t really all that close – France had 21 attempts, while Iceland had just four, and failed to register an on-target effort in the match.
We’ve seen enough to believe Switzerland deserve another chance, and a game they really must win to have any chance of qualifying. Switzerland would probably need a minimum of four points to progress, and most of those will need to come from this game one suspects given what a tough nut France will be in the final match of the group.
Switzerland to beat Iceland at 7/5 (Bet365)