EUROPE REPRESENTED BY SWITZERLAND AGAINST AMARICA REPRESENTED BY URUGUAY
— Lucien Gamblin | 09/06/1924 —

We have reached the final match, which will decide who will be the winner of the Olympic football tournament.

The two teams of Uruguay and Switzerland, who have known nothing but success during the said tournament, will fight it out this afternoon. And the merciless duel that these two eleven, with very different qualities, but first-rate in every way, will engage in promises to witness a fight of great beauty.

The Uruguayans, with their easy style and perfect technique, play a game where individuality is very evident. All the players are true artists, and their virtuosity in "handling" the ball leads them to keep it as long as they can afford to. This way of doing things obviously has some drawbacks, but what a pleasure it is for the appropriate public who watch with great satisfaction this debauchery of exploits, this diversity of acts and personal gestures that captivate by the ease with which they are accomplished by these undisputed masters of the king of sports: football.

The Swiss, for their part, are, it is certain, less good technicians. Their players have not accustomed us to consider them as the equals in skill of the masters they are called upon to meet today. But the entire eleven possesses to such a degree the moral value that makes great teams, that it manages to largely compensate for what it lacks in science by a drive, an energy, a will and a constancy in the effort absolutely unparalleled.

The Swiss players cannot be considered models of finesse, and their somewhat haphazard play is far from being an example of "fair play". But the eleven team members of the Confederation were able to give all the teams they were called upon to meet during the Olympic tournament such a lesson in energy and love of their colours that, even defeated this afternoon at Colombes, they will remain, for those who saw them operate, players of such moral value that their exploits will figure in the minds of all in the very first rank of the great deeds accomplished during the Games of the VIII Olympiad.

What does this afternoon's match lead us to predict? Which team will be the champion tonight, the one whose colours will fly up there, above the Olympic Stadium, which saw so many fine battles take place, which saw so many hopes sink and which was the scene of real sporting dramas?

Uruguay had an easier time qualifying than Switzerland. They eliminated Yugoslavia by 7 goals to 0, then the United States by 3 to 0, France by 5 goals to 1 and finally, in the semi-final, they barely beat the valiant team of Holland by 2 goals to 1.

Switzerland, for its part, first beat Lithuania, and this by 9 goals to 0; then they came up against Czechoslovakia, which they only overcame after 2 matches and two and a half hours of play. In the quarter-finals, they had to overcome Italy and, in the semi-finals, Sweden, whose crushing success over Belgium had made them one of the favorites of the tournament.

Who will win out of these two equally formidable teams? Will the drive, ardor and will of the Swiss succeed in supplanting the science, the skill and the finesse of the South Americans? We do not think so, and yet? What are the limits of these eleven players in red jerseys, who do not stop at any obstacle, who go straight to the goal without getting bogged down in details and who fight so valiantly that it seems that they can hope for anything?

However, the Uruguayans are such superior footballers that we will make them our favorites, but we would not be at all surprised if tonight the Olympic mast were to wave the red flag with the federal cross in the wind.