Rangers asset Cedric Itten’s relative shortage of playing time at Ibrox is proving to be costly after his latest international squad snub.
Itten represents Switzerland and after making his way through the age-group levels, made his senior debut in 2019.
He has four caps and three goals to his name and was a part of the squad when he arrived at Ibrox in the summer following an impressive Swiss Super League campaign with St Gallen.
However, he’s slipped down the pecking order in recent times, missing out on a call-up for two Nations League matches and a friendly in November 2020 and now for a pair of World Cup Qualifiers against Bulgaria and Lithuania, as well as a friendly against Finland.
Itten missed out despite Switzerland manager Vladimir Petkovic calling up six forwards for the fixtures.
Haris Seferovic and Admir Mehmedi of Benfica and Wolfsburg respectively were guaranteed picks, as were Breel Embolo and Mario Gavranovic, who represent Borussia Moenchengladbach and Dinamo Zagreb at club level.
However, the Gers man may be disappointed to have missed out to Ruben Vargas and Christian Fassnacht, neither of whom are prolific goalscorers or particularly established at international level.
The key difference between Itten and that pair, though, is that they have been playing regularly at club level.
Steven Gerrard’s £2.7m summer signing [Sky Sports] has made 33 appearances for Rangers in all competitions this season, only failing to appear in 15 matches.
However, he’s made just eight starts and has only 1009 minutes of playing time under his belt. Only two of his starts have come in 2021.
By comparison, Vargas has made 12 Bundesliga starts for Augsburg and Fassnacht has racked up 2618 minutes of action for BSC Young Boys [Transfermarkt].
Itten is clearly at a significant disadvantage to his opponents when it comes to selection and it’s hard to see a call-up coming for the European Championships in the summer unless he receives a number of starts and gets amongst the goals in the post-split Premiership fixtures.
One of Itten’s teammates was in international action on Wednesday night, but he was hooked at half-time in a shock defeat.
