Petkovic confident that Switzerland can get something from England

Switzerland national team manager Vladimir Petkovic says that he is confident that his team will be able to get something from the match against England in the first Euro 2016 qualifying match. This is the first competitive match for the new manager and he will be having a tough job on his hands following Switzerland’s excellent World Cup 2014. The Europeans came close to beating an Argentina team in the last 16 of the tournament only to be beaten by a late goal. Since then, expectations of Switzerland have risen immensely and Petkovic is hoping to meet those expectations.

While Switzerland have been on the way the world rankings published by FIFA, England have been on the way down in the last few years. A disastrous World Cup 2014 in which they failed even get past the group stages have seen England slip to their lowest ranking. This poor form coupled with several key players like Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard retiring in the last few months places a lot of stress upon England manager Roy Hodgson. Petkovic says that he is hoping to take advantage of this uncertainty surrounding England and proving that Switzerland’s World Cup campaign was no fluke.

Compared to England, Petkovic is expected to field a young team with 11 players under 23. “I like to be the favourite in a game, but confirmation always comes on the pitch. There’s still a lot of respect for England — no fear, but lots of respect. The Swiss FA during the past 10 years have been doing very well and improved on all levels. It’s been a good quality improvement. Now we can say we’re level with the English team. England is still England — a big name in football. We will play them with all the respect we have tomorrow (Monday),” said Petkovic.

Evra Makes Clever Choice

The French defender Patrice Evra opted to leave Old Trafford and join Juventus with one of the main reasons which is believes that the veteran defender decided to make this move is because of Luke Shaw who is a younger option at the left-back position for Louis van Gaal.

Even though Luke Shaw is only 19 years old, it did not stop Manchester United’s officials on paying Southampton around €30 million in order to sign the young player who is considered to be as one of the most promising stars around the world.

Having paid such a substantial amount of cash to sign Luke Shaw, it means that Patrice Evra would have to settle for a place in the sidelines of Old Trafford but Evra decided instead to make a move to a club where his chances of playing in the main are guaranteed and the experienced did not hesitate in looking around for the other options and eventually decided to join the Italian side Juventus.

Juventus has now claimed the Italian League title, Scudetto for the 3^rd consecutive year but Patrice Evra is hoping that he can help his new club on winning it for another successive instance as the Frenchman went on talking about some of his goals now that he joined Juventus and displayed emotions ash he said just how tough it was for him to leave Manchester United.

Patrice Evra said: “It was very difficult to leave Man United because it was like my second family. But as soon as I knew there was interest from Juve, I knew it would be a new challenge for me because I have to repay the faith they showed in me. I have to show more as a Juventus player because we have to win the league four times in a row. It’s never easy to win four times in a row. I won it with Man United three times but four times is really difficult. And we have to do much better in the Champions League.”