They can give a good match, but being on the ground the signals will be attenuated by surrounding objects, particularly on the higher frequencies. If your ground has poor conductivity results will be very poor. Verticals can be elevated, using either radials or extra traps. They can then work very well, as long as you don t have any neighbours. In an urban environment the EMC problems can be chronic.
All vertical antennas suffer from another problem.
They require good conductivity soil for many wavelengths around them to compete with horizontals. Even verticals that do not use a ground connection i.e. vertical dipoles or ground planes etc. can still be as much as 8 dB down on a horizontal dipole antenna, due to reflection losses. The difference between sea water and very poor ground is up to 9 dB for a vertical antenna, but only 1 dB for a horizontal. This is really just a short dipole that is bent and end loaded with a variable capacitor. There is no magic involved in the way it works, a standard electromagnetic wave is produced from them, as per any other antenna.