Manzambi’s substitute brace fires Switzerland past 10-man Bosnia and into Group B’s lead

For more than an hour at SoFi Stadium, Group B’s two winless sides looked set for another stalemate. Then Switzerland emptied their bench, and the game broke open. Johan Manzambi came off it to score twice, Bosnia and Herzegovina lost a man to a red card, and a tight contest in Inglewood finished as a 4-1 rout that lifts the Swiss to the top of the group.

Manzambi changes the game minutes after coming on

Manzambi had been on the pitch for only a few minutes, on as a substitute for Dan Ndoye, when he broke the deadlock in the 74th minute. The connection on the volley was clean and unanswerable, and it gave Switzerland the lead they had been pushing for without much reward across a cagey first hour.

The contest tilted further when Tarik Muharemovic was shown a straight red card, his sliding challenge catching Breel Embolo as the last defender and leaving Bosnia a man down for the closing stretch. Switzerland made the extra player count almost at once, Ruben Vargas doubling the lead in the 84th minute after a night in which he had a hand in much of the Swiss team’s best work.

Down to ten, Bosnia could not hold the line. Manzambi struck again in the 90th minute, finishing off a Vargas pass to complete his brace and put the result beyond doubt. It was a remarkable cameo from a player who had started the night as a reserve.

A late flurry rounds off the scoreline

Bosnia did at least get something on the board, pulling a goal back through Ermin Mahmic in second-half stoppage time. Any hope of a nervy finish was snuffed out almost immediately, though, as Granit Xhaka stepped up to convert a penalty deep into added time and stretch the margin to 4-1.

The four-goal haul means plenty for the Swiss beyond the three points. After being held to a 1-1 draw by Qatar in their opener, Switzerland now sit on four points and move to the top of Group B, well placed as the group stage heads toward its final round. Their substitutes did the damage here, a useful sign of depth at a tournament where squads are tested across a long month.

For Bosnia, it is a difficult night to absorb. They opened with a 1-1 draw against hosts Canada and looked organised for long spells here before the late collapse, but a heavy defeat leaves them with work to do to keep their knockout hopes alive when the group concludes.

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