Current Situation of Switzerland Football
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发布于: 11年前
Current Situation of Switzerland Football
REPORTER: First this week we will focus on one of the two home nations here, Switzerland sharing the tournament with Austria of course. They were the first team sadly to be eliminated, losing to Turkey and Czech Republic. But the popularity of the European Championship far surpasses any football event every stage before in the country. It's hard to believe that the scenes of their games that domestically here is struggling. In UEFA's least best leagues in Europe, it comes a lowly sixteen. World Football's Enmar is being finding out why the Swiss doesn't seem to reflect the country's love of the game.
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ENMAR: That's the call bells you can hear in the background. Everywhere around our sight in stadium, you can see them in red and white. It's a color of both Switzerland and Turkey. This very much looks like a football country. There are thousands of thousands of people going into St. Jakob Stadium, it holds over forty thousand. And it looks like the top stadium that you will find in some of top leagues around Europe.
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But there's a far cry from the professional division in Switzerland called the Super League. The division has ten teams who play each other four times over the court of the season. The average of the attendance of the games is just over ten thousand. And the Swiss supporters for them were never able to compete with the powerful European leagues.
FAN 1: In Switzerland, everybody is very keen. It sounds like in evening everybody is living for football. So it will be difficult for the Super League to become, and like another big key league in Europe. The problem is Switzerland is a smaller country and you can not compare it with other leagues like Germany, French or Great Britain.
FAN 2: You don't get good players from other countries to play in Switzerland, because they can not earn so much money. So you have the only chance with young Swiss players, and then to hope they get better and to sell it to big teams, that's the goal for Switzerland.
ENMAR: And sports journalists agree with the fans.
PARTCH KENSLEY: My name is Partch Kensley and I work for the Basler Zeitung, the biggest newspaper in Basel. I live in this town. The problems that Swiss football has are the problems of every small country. There's no difference to Austria, for example, to Sweden, or to Belgium. It's almost everywhere the same thing. You don't have the money to compete with the big European leagues. And you, all you can do is try to bring out your own interesting players and that the people in your country are interested to see these young players. Football will always stay on a slower level than, for example, in the big leagues.
ENMAR: One of the people trying to change the fortunes of domestic game and get more people through the turnout is Roger Muller, of the Swiss Football League.
ROGER MULLER: Our bigger problem is that we need to keep the stadiums filled. This is more and more important, because it is totally different atmosphere if the stadium is filled or empty. These European Championship stadiums now are made too big for our standards. So these are the real questions that we have to try to keep these games attractive, and to have to bring people into the stadiums so they look fuller, because that usually attracts more people.
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ENMAR: Only a handful of the players in the Swiss national sports play football in Switzerland. The clubs can not compete with the transfer fees on way it is offered in Germany, Spain and England. And the Swiss top division is seen as a fade league for other bigger football nations, unlike star lions
ROGER MULLER: It's also one of the big tasks we are facing, because it's obviously a big name, it's always an advantage if you want to sell for sponsor's rights. It's obvious. And yeah on one hand it is a very good thing that we have all these players abroad. Because that shows we have good education system that our people, our young players are really talented ones. But now we have to try to keep, to bring some people also back to help and play in foreign countries. But that will stay for quite a while, that will be the case and we will just have to do. That we have to try to bring new stars to the lights, so to speak.
ENMAR: Could you invite David Beckham to style signing, like Alec Gaserlin, basically on the profile of the league, one club sign, you know, the world most well-known club.
ROGER MULLER: I don't really think that's the way we could compete. Because I mean we lack money, that's one point. And on the other hand, we really have to focus on young talents, on people that come up from younger ranks and try to be professional and do everything for professionalism. That's just not the kind of people that we ever have, we'll never see here again, I think. And sport was never that really such a big thing in Switzerland, sports stars were never regarded as those big heroes that they probably are abroad. And also what we face, we really have to invest our infrastructure in new stadiums which is we can't stop at just what we are at the moment.
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ENMAR: So we see an audience for the Swiss football.
ROLAN MICHAELAN: My name is Rolan Michaelan, and I am from the Swiss broadcasting corporation as a chief. I'm head of major sports event. The Swiss Football League has two right holders, actually for, for all live matches for Pay TV, it's telecast. And on the other hand, it is for distant, live matches, it's as a chief, with all the highlight.
ENMAR: How did the writings compare from watching the Swiss international to watching the domestic games?
ROLAN MICHAELAN: Oh, from the terminal spoken part for example last game against Czech Republic, was the second best way that we ever had. In football that was one million six point one and up to half a million and good to say it is the range for the national football.