Yakin’s strategy leads to success against Hungary.

There was still about an hour until kick-off when Murat Yakin walked out of the belly of the Rheinenergie Stadium. A look to the left, a handshake to the right, Yakin greeted the numerous Swiss fans already present. A smile flew into the sky.

In these minutes of tense anticipation of the first European Championship match, the smile is also the smile of the poker player who has just gone “all in”. Because his line-up contains huge surprises, it has nothing to do with what Yakin suggested before the match or what would have been logical based on the test matches against Estonia and Austria.

But what does poker have to do with logic? Three hours later, Yakin knows that the risk was worth it.

The poker game that Yakin came up with looks like this this afternoon in Cologne: Kwadwo Duah is in the starting line-up, the 27-year-old centre-forward did not see any land in his debut half of the friendly against Estonia. Michel Aebischer, a central midfielder, is to play on the left after Aebischer played in this position in the friendly against Austria, leaving only the question of how a coach could come up with such an idea. After four friendly matches on the left, Dan Ndoye plays on the right, where Xherdan Shaqiri is expected to play. Shaqiri is on the bench. As is Zeki Amdouni, who has scored seven goals for the national team.

When the game ends 3-1, Yakin throws his arms in the air: Poker won!

Praise for Yakin, the “tactics fox”

Yakin has once again managed to live up to his reputation as a “tactical fox”. “We had no solution in the first half because Aebischer played on the left,” said Hungary’s coach Marco Rossi after the match, disappointed. In jargon, that means “outcoached”, tricked by the opposing coach. For Yakin, such a coaching compliment is perhaps the greatest praise he can receive. And Granit Xhaka also agrees with the risk of using the surprising line-up. “Now I have to be careful what I say,” the captain begins his vote on the line-up, but it ends with the dry statement: “The coach did everything right today.”

Whoever does everything right in a football match is a hero. And if this football match is also the opening match of the European Championships in Germany, the hero might even be a superhero. Superhero Murat Yakin – it hasn’t looked like that in recent weeks and months. But things can happen quickly in football. Downwards, like last autumn. And upwards, like on Saturday in Cologne.

It will soon be three years since Yakin has been in the most important job in Swiss football. He is the surprising solution when Vladimir Petkovic said goodbye to Switzerland after the 2021 European Championship with the memorable round of 16 victory against France. Yakin has created his own world at the small FC Schaffhausen. At his presentation, he said that he had not expected “for a second” that the association would have him in mind as Petkovic’s successor. The World Cup qualifiers against opponents Italy are coming up – was there any hesitation in accepting the job? “I don’t think like that,” he says, “I look ahead, I rely on my gut feeling.” Yakin has always stuck to that. Even as national coach.

Strengthened after the storm

His gut feeling tells him on Saturday that he can surprise everyone with his plan. When he starts as national coach, this feeling tells him that he can secure a ticket to the World Cup in Qatar even without the injured Granit Xhaka.

He reactivated Fabian Frei from Basel, and in November, after the victory against Bulgaria, Swiss football was at his feet. Mission accomplished, everything done right. A year later, Yakin was sitting helpless in the desert of Qatar. The day after the 6-1 defeat against Portugal in the World Cup round of 16, he was no longer particularly interested in the media that he had gambled badly in terms of tactics and personnel. He preferred to look “forward”. Before the European Championship qualifiers, he said that “two or three sentences with the players are enough to process things.”

He then fulfilled his mission of qualifying against Andorra, Belarus, Israel, Kosovo and Romania to take part in the tournament in Germany. Last autumn, the performances were haphazard, and it was not just his boss, Pierluigi Tami, who wondered what the audience was seeing: where did the sudden nervousness, the uncertainty, the bad-tempered aura come from? Yakin was ill, and the media and some officials were calling for him to be removed.

Urs Fischer is free, and negotiations could also be held with Lucien Favre. But the lack of courage in the association is helping Yakin to weather the storm. He is going into the preparations for the European Championship with his usual relaxed attitude, and Giorgio Contini is now at his side as an assistant, as he once was at FC Luzern. Harun Gülen is joining the staff as an athletic trainer and video analyst Selcuk Sasivari, both of whom worked under Yakin at FC Schaffhausen.

When a completely different piece of his past recently emerged from former assistants, athletic trainers or video analysts, Yakin did not let it disturb his preparations for the European Championships. In the Basel criminal court, a lawyer demanded that a criminal convicted of serious violence and other crimes return watches that Yakin had given him to sell. That was four years ago, and perhaps he was a little gullible at times, said the national coach. Looking ahead. The association found that he could not comment on “private matters”. A poker game won in Cologne was enough, and all of that probably no longer matters.

Everyone must know their role

During the preparation, Yakin emphasised that he had had many discussions because “everyone in the team has to know their role”. It is a nice sentence from the coaching textbook. What it can mean and how Yakin lives it with the team and individual players could be experienced first hand in these days. Aebischer and Duah said after the game that they had known for days from Yakin that they would be playing. The rest of the team only found out about it much later.

Xherdan Shaqiri also provided a good example on Thursday of how Yakin conveys how “everyone has to know their role”. When asked whether Yakin sees him more as a regular player or a joker, Shaqiri said: “We haven’t talked about that.” Did he feel he was physically ready for three games in eight days? Of course he was, was the answer, he was a “professional”. Yakin and Shaqiri obviously didn’t really understand how the tasks and roles could be distributed. But when the poker game works out like it did against Hungary, the coach has done everything right. Including communication.

After the game, Yakin was asked whether he was a poker player or whether it was just the journalists who saw it that way. “Am I a poker player?” Yakin asked himself again with a grin. He replied: “I prefer to play chess. That’s my game.” Perhaps Yakin will continue to play chess at this European Championship like he did against Hungary, chess like a poker player. On the train ride from the base camp in Stuttgart to Cologne, he played two games and his victim lost twice, Yakin said. Then he left. Scotland was waiting on Wednesday.