After a relatively uneventful first half between Denmark and Switzerland on Thursday, the game sparked into life in the second period. First, Switzerland’s Silvan Widmer was booked for wasting time. A few minutes later, Nico Elvedi was sent off for a last-man foul on Kasper Dolberg. Denmark stepped up the pressure, but Switzerland managed to hold out at 0-0 with 10 men until the final eight minutes of the game. With Switzerland’s Breel Embolo writhing on the ground claiming a foul, Denmark ran up the other end and took the lead through Patrick Dorgu. Granit Xhaka was incensed by the decision, and he earned a yellow card for his complaints. He wasn’t the only one booked, with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Morten Hjulmand, and Manuel Akanji also receiving yellow cards in the ensuing argument. A few minutes later, Xhaka caught Spurs loanee Hojbjerg with a very late challenge – albeit a relatively harmless one – and was shown a second yellow card. Hojbjerg went on to score a second for Denmark, who took all three points from the contest.

“He is a top footballer, but he is also a bit of a b***h,” Joachim Andersen said of Xhaka after the game. “We know Granit, and he can go to it once in a while and get a little angry on the pitch. That’s the way it is. He is a player I have a lot of respect for, and sometimes you can lose your head. I think he has been good at keeping calm for many years, but today he lost his head a little.” Xhaka will now be suspended for Switzerland’s match against Spain on Sunday.

Granit Xhaka and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg are no strangers to having midfield battles, with the pair locking horns multiple times whilst at Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Xhaka left Arsenal just over a year ago and has since enjoyed great success with Bayer Leverkusen, picking up trophies in his first season with the club. Hojbjerg departed Tottenham this summer, heading for what he hopes is more prominence at Marseille and a fight for titles. There was an opportunity for old Arsenal-Tottenham rivalries to get another airing as Denmark played Switzerland on Thursday evening. The two midfielders were big features in the game, with Xhaka getting sent off for a second yellow card after 87 minutes, and Hojbjerg then scoring Denmark’s second, to make the game safe, in injury time.

Quoted by Swiss website 4-4-2 after his side’s 2-0 defeat, Xhaka accused the Danes as showing no respect during the game: “In football, the word respect is very important. But what the Danes showed today has nothing to do with respect. We behaved in an exemplary manner in the first half. When a Danish player was on the ground, we kicked the ball out. In the second half, the Danish players see that Breel Embolo is on the ground. But they don’t play the ball out and we concede the 0:1. The rest is history.” Xhaka was shown a yellow card for his protests after Denmark captain Hojbjerg didn’t tell his team to kick the ball out of play, and a few minutes later he was cautioned again after a late challenge on midfielder. You can take the boy out of the North London Derby, but you can’t take the North London Derby out of the boy.

The match, held in Copenhagen, turned chaotic in the second half as two Swiss players were sent off, including Xhaka, who ended his 966-day streak without a dismissal. The drama started to unfold when Switzerland’s Nico Elvedi was controversially sent off in the 52nd minute minute for foul on Kasper Dolberg. Initially handed a yellow card by German referee Daniel Siebert, the decision was upgraded to a red after a VAR review. This infuriated Xhaka and the rest of the Swiss squad, as they believed Dolberg had hooked onto Elvedi before the foul, making the dismissal unfair. Xhaka didn’t mince words in his post-match criticism.

“This is a huge scandal for me,” Xhaka fumed, referring to Elvedi’s red card. “To go out and watch only part of the action and not the whole thing – I’ve never seen anything like it before. You need to see the full picture, not just a piece.” With Switzerland down to 10 men, Denmark took control of the match, and tensions on the pitch quickly escalated. After 82 minutes, Patrick Dorgu scored Denmark’s opener while Swiss forward Breel Embolo lay injured on the ground, sparking more outrage from Xhaka and his teammates. They believed Denmark had shown a lack of sportsmanship by continuing play instead of putting the ball out, as Switzerland had earlier in the match when a Danish player was injured.

“In football, the word ‘respect’ is capitalised,” Xhaka said. “What the Danish players have done has nothing to do with respect. The Danes saw that Breel was lying on the ground, they just played on and scored. That’s how the 1-0 happened, and the rest is history.” Just five minutes after Denmark took the lead, Xhaka’s emotions got the better of him. In the 87th minute, the Swiss captain fouled former Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Pierre-Emile Højbjerg with a late but not particularly dangerous challenge. However, having already been shown a yellow card for dissent four minutes earlier, the foul resulted in a second yellow for Xhaka, leading to his dismissal. Reflecting on the moment after the game, Xhaka admitted, “It happened. That it must not happen, I know that too. I’ve become calmer in recent years, but I am a person who is very emotional, especially when things are going wrong.” Despite his own red card, Xhaka’s frustration remained focused on the earlier decision to send off Elvedi and did not want to hear the referee’s explanation. “He saw right away that we didn’t want to hear from him at all,” Xhaka said. Denmark added to Switzerland’s misery by scoring a second goal in stoppage time, with Højbjerg finding the net to seal a 2-0 win. Switzerland, reduced to nine men after Xhaka’s sending off, had no chance of mounting a comeback in the final moments of the match.

Xhaka later apologised to his teammates on social media, acknowledging the impact of his dismissal on the result. The red card marks the 16th dismissal of Xhaka’s professional career, spanning 735 matches at both club and international levels. Although he was booked 76 times as an Arsenal player, all five of his reds during his time in England were direct. He never once picked up a two-yellow red. While the midfielder has made strides in curbing his disciplinary issues, the events in Copenhagen show that his passion can still occasionally lead to lapses in judgment. His suspension means he will miss Switzerland’s next Nations League fixture against Spain, leaving his team to recover from a frustrating night in Denmark.