Switzerland remind Southgate that international football is about control

Imagine that was a league game. England found a path to victory. They were better after half-time. They had the strength of character to come from behind. It’s a sign of a title-winning team that they can still win when nowhere near their best. A lot of the squad players had a run-out. The friendly win against Switzerland, in that sense, was a satisfactory evening for Gareth Southgate.

But this was not a league game. It was international football, so everything is heightened, hysterical and overblown, albeit not perhaps as much as it would have been in the pre-Southgate days. There is so little evidence available that everything has to be over-scrutinised – except, perhaps, the opposition.

This is a very good Switzerland side. They’ve just progressed unbeaten through qualifying, eliminating Italy on the way. That was Murat Yakin’s first defeat in eight games as coach. They are, for what it’s worth, ranked 14th in the world, just nine places below England. Nobody had scored twice against them since the world champions France in the Euros last summer – and Switzerland ended up winning that tie on penalties. Switzerland are, by pretty much any measure, the best side England have faced since the Euros. But the tendency seems to be to think that because it’s 41 years since England lost to Switzerland then of course we should be beating this lot.

But a win against Switzerland, in the present context, is a decent result. Viewing this with an eye on the World Cup, Switzerland are likely to be the level of the next best team in the group.

But there must also be a sense of realism, if a friendly is to have any purpose. It was not a decent performance. The best that could be said of the defending in the first half was that at least