Football in Switzerland

Switzerland is not really a country as well known for football as for example England, but nevertheless the EURO 2008 will be held in Switzerland and Austria this year and excitement is gradually building up. One of the stadiums that will be used in the tournament is that in Basel. The owner of the Basel team is a lady who is not exactly poor as she married a millionaire who has his money from the chemical company Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel. She is very devoted to this team and has invested a lot of money into the stadium and infrastructure and is always to be seen at the matches.

I was a bit spoilt for football last week as after seeing Manchester play Barcelona and Chelsea play Liverpool in two brilliant professional matches, I had the pleasure of watching Basel play Zürich on Friday evening on our tv. It was not a cup match but one of the deciding matches to who would win the Swiss league championship in Switzerland this year. At the same time Xamax in Neuchatel were playing Bern Young boys. Xamax won which in my eyes was to be expected as they are and have always been a good team. If my younger son went to a match when he lived at home he would rather travel an hour on the road to Neuchatel than see Solothurn our home team, which would be a half hours walk away.

So we were left with Basel and Zürich. Basel people do not like Zürich people - this is a fact. A couple of years ago when Basel met Zürich in Zürich the Basel spectators started throwing fireworks at the Zürich people, so what more could be expected this time.

The video shows what happened. People had to leave their seats panicking and running from the flaming fireworks that were raining down on them from the Zürich supporters sitting in the stands above. The match was stopped for a while until things were organised and part of the seating eventually had to be abandoned. At the price of about 100 francs per ticket, this was definitely not funny. I just wonder why people do this. A father might go to a match with his son, or a couple of colleagues go together looking forward to the evenings football entertainment and because of a few "hooligans" the match is stopped and they may even be injured.

I hear so much about the ICF (Inter City Firm), the supporter hooligan organisation that criminalised football in england but it seems that we Swiss are not much better.

And the match - well as I said I had just been spoilt last week. Basel won 4:1. Of course they were the better team, but not exactly impressive. The Zürich team seemed to have been ordered to be there but not picked up. They sort of stood around and watched the Basel team play with the ball. I just hope the national team play a bit better in th Euro 2008. Most of the players play abroad in other teams so they might be a bit more professional than the bunch I saw on Friday.