Hosts seek answers from friendly event

As the fight to qualify for next year's European Championship finals resumes this weekend, the only two countries to have already made sure of their starting places face their own battles.

Austria and Switzerland, who have qualified for Euro 2008 as co-hosts, have invited Japan and Chile to play in a friendly tournament starting today to help them get into form.

Austria appear to have the most work to do. There are nine months until the European Championship kicks off in Basel and it is 10 months since Josef Hickersberger's side celebrated a win.

Admittedly, the Austrians have faced some strong opponents in friendlies. There have been 1-0 defeats away to World Cup runners-up France and at home to Scotland, as well as an impressive 1-1 draw against the Czech Republic last month.

After also failing to overcome Malta, Ghana and Paraguay, however, Hickersberger knows that the fans are getting restless.

"Of course some people have been pointing out that we haven't won a match so far in 2007 and they are right," Hickersberger told Reuters at his team's training base in Velden.

"But we really have played against some very strong teams and when you look at our last 11 matches we have won three, lost three and drawn the rest.

"So okay, we are not as good as we want to be right now but we are also not as poor as many people think."

The pressure on Switzerland coach Koebi Kuhn is of a different nature with many Swiss fans expecting his promising, young side to punch above their weight at Euro 2008.

Boosted by consecutive qualifications for Euro 2004 and last year's World Cup, the Swiss faced criticism after a poor run of results, including a 2-1 defeat away to Austria last October.

The team have rallied since then, however, holding Argentina to a 1-1 draw in June before upsetting the Netherlands 2-1 in Geneva last month.

"We have shown that we are on the way back up again and that we can get good results against big sides," said Kuhn after overseeing Switzerland's first win against a top-10 nation in more than 14 years.

"The draw with Argentina and the win over the Netherlands was something of a turning point for us and now it is up to the players to make sure they qualify for the Euro 2008 squad," Kuhn said at a media conference.

"All the players who have been called up into the squad will get a chance to play at some point during the four-nations tournament and of course the Netherlands win will mean very little if we fall apart in our next match."

For Switzerland that next match is against Chile in Vienna today, while the Austrians take on Japan in the first game to be played at Klagenfurt's Euro 2008 stadium.

On Tuesday, the fixtures are reversed with Austria travelling to Vienna to play Chile and Switzerland heading south to meet Japan.

The tournament's set-up means there will no match between the Swiss and the Austrians but the two sides will face off next month in a friendly in Zurich.

Striking differences

Despite the similarities of their Alpine geography, landscape, language and population, Switzerland and Austria display striking differences in the composition of their national soccer teams.

The Swiss team is primarily made up of foreign-based players with only five members of the current 22-man squad playing in Switzerland. Austria's footballers have so far proved less attractive to Europe's bigger leagues with 13 of Hickersberger's 20-man squad based at home.

Switzerland's recent successes have owed much to the smooth integration into the senior team of members of the country's 2002 under-19 European Championship-winning side and the under-21 team that reached the European Championship semi-finals in the same year.

Austria's own success at junior level has been more recent with a surprise run to the semi-finals of this year's under-20 World Cup.

Five members of that squad have received senior call-ups but with just 10 caps between them their incorporation is clearly a work in progress.

"I am very optimistic that Austria has a better long-term future with these players but it is impossible to play against good-quality teams if you use too many young players," said Hickersberger.

Although working as partners to stage Euro 2008, Switzerland and Austria will be eager to outdo each other when the tournament begins, or at least to not fall in the group stage while watching their neighbours advance.

A meeting at the tournament itself would be no bad thing for either side, since the earliest they could meet would be in the quarter-finals.