The most common letter in the English language...

For whatever reason, this group had about the least appeal to me.  The French were looking impressive, Honduras didn''t, and Ecuador and Switzerland were enigmas.

Expecting the French to win handily, I opted to watch the Swiss game, although I was paying much less attention than to other games.

But it started out pretty quickly, with the Swiss getting the ball in the box in the second or third minute, but they were unable to get a good shot off.

But it didn't take long for another Swiss attack to materialize; Shaqiri finally justified my faith, putting it in with an impressive curving shot to the far side from the top of the box only a few minutes later.  It was very similar to Messi's goal from the top of the box that beat Iran, except that it didn't go quite all the way to the far post, and did hit the crossbar.

Shaqiri delivered again in the thirty-first minute.  A long pass to Drmic gave he and Shaqiri a 2-on-1, and they quickly made it a 2-on-none with a quick pass just out of reach of the defender.  Shaqiri drifted across from right to left, then put the ball back across to the right, with the goalie having no chance.  It was just a perfectly executed fast break with the only two defenders around barely missing intercepting it.

From there, I paid a little attention until halftime, but it didn't look like Honduras was going to seriously threaten, so I missed Shaqiri completing the hat trick in the seventy-first minute.  Kudos to him for a fabulous game when the team needed him most.  I hope he plays like that again in the knockout (unless they somehow end up facing the US, though that would require several very unlikely upsets).

Anyway, France won the group on the strength of a scoreless draw with Ecuador adding to their two earlier, convincing wins.  And Switzerland moved on, with their two wins.