Granit Jaka aims to write stories in EURO 2024 with Switzerland

In EURO 2020, the Italians exceeded expectations, eliminating France with penalty at 1/8 and lost a place in the semifinal after a defeat from Spain. His team has all the reasons to be proud of their achievements, but as the 31-year-old midfielder explains, past achievements are not account for much for his ambitious side.

With arrival in the quarterfinals of EURO 2020

It felt like an achievement for us, for the staff, but also for the whole Swiss. The match against France has already entered history books. We'll always remember that game. If we had a little more luck, we might have eliminated the Spaniards [in the quarterfinals, where Switzerland lost to penalty].

Unfortunately, during the penalty shooting we had no luck on our side. Show him once again that we are a good team and that we can achieve something together. That's our goal now even for the tour of Germany and we'll give everything to make history again.

Being on the national team and leading him as captain is my pride. Yet, none of these things [in themselves] benefit me: I'm a very ambitious person, I want to be successful. I want to lead the team to make history again in Germany, so this team can remember, and we'll work hard to do it!

Many [our] players have won titles [this season]. But many players have also reached the Champions League, and that gives them motivation and self-confidence, and we feel that even during training. Training is at a very high level; in my opinion, it hasn't been so high for a long time and we push each other. Everybody wants to play. We have a lot of competition for seats. And that makes a team stronger and individual players stronger. It should be.

At Switzerland's Target for EURO 2024

Of course we want to cross the group phase. In my opinion, the group we have is difficult. But our number one goal is to reach 1/8 of the final, and then play a game at a time and hope to get as far as possible.

The first match [against Hungary] is certainly important. I'm not saying we should win, but it would certainly be great if we could start the tournament with victory. We have to play a perfect game against Hungary and stay focused for 90 minutes. And we need team spirit. Together we are strong. We hope we will be able to show this in our first match Saturday.