Lausanne-Sport can be described as a surprise team in the Super League. The 21-year-old Alvyn Sanches has played a big part in this. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement in the youth sector in Switzerland.
09.11.2024, 05:00
09.11.2024, 08:58
SDA
Lausanne-Sport's 6th place in the table after 13 rounds was not to be expected. Coach Ludovic Magnin's team have won all of their last four games and have not conceded a goal. They are just five points behind leaders Zurich.
When you think of Lausanne-Sport, you cannot avoid the name Alvyn Sanches. It's a feast for the eyes to watch the French-born attacking player. He is extremely difficult for opponents to read and therefore unpredictable. However, like the team, Sanches needed some time to get up to speed at the start of the season. Due to transfer rumors, his head was not clear at first. That has now changed and is reflected in the statistics. While he failed to score in the first five games of the current championship, he has scored five goals and provided one assist in the last eight games.
Creative and introverted
You don't have to be a prophet to predict that Sanches' current transfer value of four million euros will skyrocket. One person who knows him well is Sascha Stauch, who coached him with the Swiss U21 national team - Sanches scored three goals and provided two assists in the last European Championship qualifiers.
"He is a player who has enormous creativity coupled with a good finishing rate. He also understands how football works," says Stauch in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency about Sanches, who is more of a late developer. As a person, he describes him as "reserved and rather introverted. He doesn't talk much, but when he does say something, it's good things. He seems modest, but knows exactly what he wants. If he maintains this drive, he will give us a lot of pleasure."
However, even Sanches could not prevent the Swiss U21 national team from failing to qualify for the European Championship in bitter fashion and therefore not making it to the finals for the third time in a row.
This caused alarm, all the more so as a study commissioned by the Swiss Football Association concluded that Switzerland was lagging behind nations such as Austria, Croatia, Belgium and Denmark, which have similar conditions, in terms of both the quality and quantity of players produced. According to this study, Switzerland has only produced two top players in the last five years.
Glass half full
However, Stauch sees the glass as half full and not half empty. "We are still doing a good job in Switzerland. It's not for nothing that there are dozens of scouts on site at the U21 national team matches." For him, the question is therefore not what is bad, but in which areas there is room for improvement. What he would like to see is "more goal-oriented training with the player in mind".
His motto is: shape, don't format. "The aim is to ensure that everyone can express their strengths. This means that individual potential should be exploited first. Working only as part of a team is not always the right approach."
Stauch sees a problem in the fact that too much is taken from the talents. "Motivation should be intrinsic (from within). Many want to be like Cristiano Ronaldo, but are not prepared to do anything for it. They don't see how much work goes into it. We coaches need to communicate that more. But first and foremost, it's up to the players to develop further, they decide how far they want to go."
For Stauch, attitude and mentality are therefore just as important as footballing ability. The fact that seven players from the current U21 age group - Rieder, Omeragic, Stergiou, Jashari, Amenda, Hajdari and Loretz - have made the leap to the senior national team underlines the fact that not everything is being done wrong in youth development.
Clubs are challenged
Back to Sanches. The 21-year-old has started twelve of Lausanne-Sport's 13 championship matches so far. This makes him an exception, as clubs in the Super League hardly rely on home-grown talent any more - the laudable exception being FC Luzern. "I would like to see young players given more confidence and responsibility in their clubs. Mistakes are part of the process," says Strauch.
One solution, not only for him, would be to increase the number of clubs in the Challenge League so that there are more places for talented players, at least at this level. However, he also emphasizes: "The quality must already be there." The aim must be for the youth coaches to train and develop the players so well that the clubs have no choice but to back the youngsters. As is the case with Sanches.
