Found an error?
Report nowGranit Xhaka and Ricardo Rodriguez caused some confusion when they displayed the double eagle while attending a baseball game in the U.S. SFV boss Peter Knäbel doesn’t want to read too much into it.
The Swiss national team used a free evening after last weekend’s World Cup warm-up match against Australia to attend a San Diego Padres baseball game. During the game, the team was spotted by the cameras—and displayed prominently on the stadium screen as the “Swiss National Soccer Team.” Granit Xhaka and Ricardo Rodriguez made the double-eagle gesture toward the camera—a symbol that has been the subject of controversy in Switzerland since the 2018 World Cup match against Serbia.
The SFV later explained that Xhaka and Rodriguez were greeting the Albanian community, which had supported the team in the stadium earlier, and emphasized that the scene had no connection to the game itself.
On the “Heimspiel bei der Nati” show on blue Sport, SFV President Peter Knäbel also commented on the issue. “This national team is made up of many different backgrounds, stories, and emotions. For us, it is extremely important that for the players—when they wear a Swiss jersey and take the field in it—Switzerland is the focus,” says Knäbel.
blue Sport Editor-in-Chief Andreas Böni also doesn’t want to overreact to the situation: “It’s unnecessary, and if you do it, you have to expect and deal with the fact that some people won’t like it.
“Xhaka and Co. are ruining the World Cup for the Swiss with the Albanian double-headed eagle, ” headlined the “Weltwoche,” questioning whether it was “stupidity” or a calculated provocation. Otherwise, the matter was viewed quite objectively in the Swiss media. Böni says: “It wasn’t a big deal. And it’ll be forgotten by the time it really matters.”
Saturday night is definitely when it counts. At 9:00 p.m., Switzerland plays its World Cup opener against Qatar.
