RANDOM DAY
— Maurice Pefferkorn | 28/05/1924 —

The two matches which counted yesterday for the round of 16 of the Tournament allowed France and Holland to qualify without the slightest difficulty. These victories were anticipated. But their excessive clarity made yesterday an uninteresting day.

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France found before it a team with a very simplistic and very primitive game. She did what she wanted; but instead of giving an exhibition, trying to improve their cohesion and take care of their control, the French allowed themselves to be won over by the contagion and played the most ordinary football themselves. There was nonchalance, carelessness, negligence. We might as well have scored a dozen goals. But finally, there is no reason to be angry with our representatives who obviously wanted to take it easy. It is already quite unfortunate that Baummann was hit in the knee; he will likely be unavailable for the rest of the tournament. And that's not good news, because yesterday he seemed to be in good condition.

The Latvians totally lack technique. Nor have we observed among them the ardor which can, to a certain extent, make up for science. They are Scandivans, with fatalistic souls, who are quick to resign themselves to their fate.

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The meeting of the Dutch and the Romanians was not very exciting either. The nature of the game did not give the Dutch a clear advantage, despite the score. We can even say that the Romanians played fairly happily with them, which was, in short, the surprise of the day. But it seemed that the Dutch were not pushing hard and had much better control.

Let us therefore conclude that there has been great progress on the part of Romania, for whom there were, however, excesses and whose forwards totally lacked efficiency. As for the Dutch, they will have to recover if they want to go further than the quarter-finals. In any case, they seemed very slow and did not give the impression that was expected of them.

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Today we have a very important match scheduled. Switzerland will face the formidable Czechslovakia. They are not the clear favorites of the match, because the Swiss, recent winners of Denmark, France and Hungary, enjoy a great reputation this year.

It is true that the victories they won this season over these three nations were in Switzerland. We wonder what the Swiss can do beyond their borders. It would be a most remarkable performance for them to beat the Czechs. For my part, I don't believe it, because there are so many resources, knowledge and power among the Prague players that it is difficult to predict their elimination in the quarter-finals.

But I do not dispute that the Swiss, who play fast and ardently, have their very sincere supporters.