(Football news) Along with the two countries, Scotland and the host Germany are in Group A. Germany won the opening match of the tournament with a decisive 5-1 victory over the Tartan Army on Friday.
There is a lot of hope for Hungary going into Euro 2024 after the team failed to advance past the group round of the competition in 2020. Marco Rossi’s team is widely regarded as one of the tournament’s dark horses.
Hungary has won five and drawn three of their eight games to top their group for the first time in their history. They have only lost one of their past 14 international matches since the start of 2023. During this run, they also went undefeated during World Cup qualifying.
Ranked 26th in the world by FIFA, Hungary are now gearing up for their third consecutive European Championship appearance and have made the trip to Germany after cruising to a 3-0 victory at home to Israel in their final warm-up match last weekend.
The Magyars raced into a three-goal lead inside the opening 22 minutes courtesy of an 11th-minute opener from Roland Sallai and a brace from Barnabas Varga, before seeing out a comfortable win, providing Rossi’s men with a timely boost after suffering a surprise 2-1 friendly loss to the Republic of Ireland just four days earlier.
Hungary will be keen to make a winning start in Group A of Euro 2024, but they come up against a Switzerland outfit who have won six of the last nine meetings between the two nations.
Saturday’s encounter will be just the second time that Hungary and Switzerland have butted heads in a major tournament, with the former winning the previous encounter by a 2-0 scoreline at the 1938 World Cup. The Swiss have since come out on top in their last two international meetings, though, scoring eight goals in the process.
Ranked 19th in the world by FIFA, Switzerland endured a challenging Euro 2024 qualification campaign and battled their way to four wins and five draws from 10 matches to finish second in their group behind Romania.
Their unconvincing campaign subsequently piled pressure on manager Murat Yakin towards the end of last year, but the 49-year-old has kept his job and is preparing for his first Euros as Swiss boss, with a four-game unbeaten run since the turn of the year helping his cause.
In preparation for Euro 2024, Switzerland put Estonia to the sword 4-0 in their first of two warm-up matches, four days before playing out a 1-1 draw with Austria last weekend, with Christoph Baumgartner’s early opener cancelled out by Silvan Widmer.
The pressure is on Yakin to steer Switzerland into the knockout rounds and follow in the footsteps of his predecessors, as the Swiss have advanced from the group stage in each of the last five European Championships, and memorably reached the quarter-finals at Euro 2020, a feat they wish to replicate this summer.
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