An obituary for Switzerland, the most fun team at the women’s World Cup

Switzerland gave us Ramona Bachmann, arguably the single most exciting player of the tournament. She scored a hat-trick against Ecuador in the group stage, and when she wasn’t scoring goals she was going on scintillating runs and making exciting passes to her teammates. She was a walking, no, a dribbling highlight reel, carving open defenses and keeping Switzerland in games all on her own.

Even beyond her, the Swiss women played an exciting, energetic brand of football that’s always a gift to watch in a tournament setting. Usually smaller teams making their first appearance in a major tournament play conservative, safe football. That’s too boring for Switzerland, though, who elected to attack, then attack, and oh sure why not, attack some more.

Sadly, however, once the chips were down, it was Switzerland’s flaws that earned them this early ticket home. A knockout round match against Canada was always going to be difficult, with a raucous crowd behind the World Cup hosts. Even without the crowd, though, it was a tough draw, with Canada’s disciplined style one that was always going to give Switzerland fits.

You see, for all the Swiss’ abilities to excite and create chances to score, they were very bad at actually capitalizing on them. Yes, they blasted Ecuador, but scored only one goal in their other two group matches because they’re very wasteful in front of goal. For every one of Bachmann’s thrilling runs, there were three more from her or Lara Dickenmann that ended with the Swiss attacker running in to three defenders or needing to make a pass and finding no one running up in support. Time and again, Switzerland carved open the defenses of Japan or Cameroon or most recently Canada, but came up empty when it counted.

They also had another issue -- going to sleep in defense at the worst possible moments. All three losing goals they gave up in the World Cup were the same story: one or both central defenders switch off, attacking player finds the space they should be occupying, oh no the ball just hit the back of the net.

That combination of failure to execute at both ends of the pitch was something Switzerland were able to overcome enough to get to the knockout rounds, but not enough to beat a Canada side that didn’t really play at their best against their European opponents.

So now Switzerland are going home. Their run now exists only in our memories, to be fondly recalled when we think of the most exciting moments of this tournament. Rest in peace, Swiss 2015 Women’s World Cup team. You were fun, but now you’re gone forever.