He was an assistant to Christian Gross at GC and Basel, a trainee under Marcello Lippi, national team coach in New Zealand, promotion coach in Ghana: Fritz Schmid's career has many facets - successful, funny, grotesque, frustrating. With blue Sport, he looks back on 40 years in the business.
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- Fritz Schmid (65) has been in the football business for over 40 years. The football globetrotter talks to blue Sport about his eventful coaching life at GC, in Basel, in New Zealand, Malaysia and Ghana.
- As national coach of New Zealand, he was even bullied at times. "If you work there as a 'foreign fop', you have to live with the fact that you remain just that," says Schmid.
- In Ghana, the referee always sat in the coach's seat on the team bus, says Schmid: "There's singing in the dressing room, match balls and football boots are sprinkled with magic water to drive away evil spirits. And as a coach you still want to give tactical instructions? Forget it!"
Fritz Schmid, FC Basel has been waiting for a championship title since 2017. When you became assistant to Christian Gross in January 2002, it didn't take long before you were allowed to celebrate.
Schmid: Things took off straight away. Four championships, the first after just a few months, four cup wins, countless European Cup nights, the title celebrations with the fans on the packed Barfi. Unforgettable. Christian Gross knew how to set up a team to perfection. The winning coach par excellence. We all have a lot to thank him for, including me. And of course I'm also proud to have made a lasting contribution.
What do you mean by that?
I knew when and how I had to balance out or supplement Christian's demanding style without his line suffering as a result, without much consultation, we never discussed it specifically. But I knew what was expected of me and what I could expect from him. And that was just right for a long time. The enthusiasm in the surrounding area and throughout the city was also unique. I have to tell you one thing straight away ...
Please
I was recently back in Basel for a match and decided to use the hours before kick-off for a nostalgic stroll through the city center. I was drawn towards Spalenberg, my favorite tapas bar, where I was approached by a group of swaggering adults in front of an adjacent fashion store. FCB aficionados, unmistakable, the mood already quite cheerful: "Hey, that's...! What's your name...? Aren't you the ex-Assi, from Gross?" A palaver immediately ensues about the great times with Gross, we laugh, one joke follows the next, when the owner of the fashion store suddenly asks me: "What kind of shoes are you wearing?" I was indeed wearing heavy shoes - after all, I had traveled directly from the Engadin. But the Spalenberg committee decided that I couldn't go into the stadium like that and ordered me into the store, where I was quickly fitted with a top-fashion sneaker. As a gift, of course!
What few people know is that in 1998 you completed your Uefa Pro license in Italy, in Coverciano, the hallowed halls of Italian football. You were the first foreigner to be allowed to do so; you were also Swiss and not even an ex-professional. That's like sacrilege.
This is Fritz Schmid
Fritz Schmid (65) studied sport, German, English and journalism at ETH and the University of Zurich. He was a journalist and reported on the 1990-94 World Cup and European Championship finals for Sportinformation. He played for the GC juniors and later worked as a youth coach, fitness and rehabilitation trainer at the Hardturm. A stint at Tottenham came to an end in 1998 due to a lack of a work permit. Stations after that: U20 and assistant coach at Aarau (98/99), fitness coach at Zurich (99/00). Head coach at Kriens (00/01). Assistant in Basel (02-09). Assistant in Austria (11-13). Technical director in Malaysia (14-17). National team coach in New Zealand (18-19). Promoted coach of the Kotoku Royals in Ghana (22). At the beginning of the year, Schmid was head of youth development at GC for 22 days until he resigned in disillusionment. He also trains coaches worldwide, most recently in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Schmid is married and has a grown-up daughter.
You could almost say that. I actually wanted to do the course for fitness coaches, but it had already started. On the recommendation of former FIFA employee Walti Gagg, I was invited to the Corso Master instead, which is the course for the UEFA Pro license, which didn't even exist in Switzerland at the time. So I had the pleasure of going to school with some of calcio's cracks: with "Beppe" Dossena, a 1982 world champion, with Andrea Mandorlini, a former Inter star, or Marino Magrin, who Juve once brought in as Michel Platini's successor. And me, the "piccolo svizzero", in the middle of it all. When one of my crosses sailed over the roof of the stands during training, it was never long before Magrin's relentless feedback could be heard in the hallowed grounds of Coverciano: "Smiiiiid - al muro!" According to the motto: Practice on the wall before you play with us.
Didn't you feel exposed?
Not at all. Over time, respect also grew when we discussed technical matters. In general, the coaches treated each other with incredible respect, you were recognized as a professional colleague, even the little Swiss guy. The whole course was characterized by a high level of mutual acceptance. I also had to put up with a lot of jokes and jibes as a fitness coach at GC, so you learn to live with it (in the 90s, editor's note).
What kind of jokes?
Johann Vogel used to tease me in his quirky French dialect: "The ball isn't your fruit, is it?" And Alain Geiger, with whom I once completed a one-on-one training session in the gym, graciously patted me on the shoulder and asked mercifully: "Have you ever trained with someone who has played 110 international matches?" The respect and acceptance grew over time, until even record player Geiger let me have a serious say in tactical discussions.
You only had time for the "Corso Master" because your engagement with Tottenham fell through in 1998. Christian Gross, your former and subsequent boss, wanted to bring you to the island.
Yes, I was a little too naive. I was supposed to be a fitness coach, as I had been at GC in previous years. Everything seemed to be settled, we were already in London, the first training sessions and matches behind us. What was still missing was the work permit. However, Switzerland was already not in the EU at the time, and anyone who wanted a work permit in England as a Swiss citizen had to prove that they were the only ones eligible for this one job. As if there were no fitness coaches in England! After eight weeks, I was back home in Switzerland. If we had described my role as Christian Gross' personal assistant, it might have worked out.
You were only head coach in this country at Kriens, for just under a year and a half, until you were sacked. What went wrong?
I was young and it took me far too long to figure out my whole environment. The club was one big clique. One day before an important relegation round match against Locarno, for example, the club had a gala night. It was agreed with the players and president (Toni Burri, ed.) that the team would be politely sent home at 11 p.m., but this did not happen. The coach and two or three players said their goodbyes. The rest stayed late into the night and, according to legend, some of them staggered home at dawn. That's why I went into the dressing room before the game and pointedly decided not to have a meeting. I handed out the shirts and said something along the lines of: "Yesterday you also decided on your own how things should work, now you can show how it should work in the match today..."
What happened?
The team played one of its best games and won 2:0. Despite this, Päuli Meier, the head of sport, wanted to sack me on the spot in the initial excitement; he only calmed down a few days later. In the second year, we were on course for promotion/relegation; they still existed back then. But in the fall, Christian Gross was already pushing for me to move to Basel. And when I lost two games in a row with Kriens, things happened quickly.
Later you were technical director in Malaysia and national coach in New Zealand.
I applied for the job in New Zealand in response to an advertisement. I certainly got the job because of the Austrian Andreas Heraf, the technical director at the time, who knew me from my time as Marcel Koller's assistant at ÖFB (2011 to 2013, editor's note). Christian Gross also gave a good recommendation when the Kiwis asked for references. And New Zealand is of course a wonderful country - for tourists, nota bene. Anyone who works there as a "foreigner" has to live with the fact that they will remain just that. Even fellow coaches back home let you feel that from time to time. Declan Edge, ex-professional at Waikato United and Hamilton Wanderers, later head of the academy in Wellington, gave me the unmistakable advice when we first met: "Go back where you came from. Go back where you came from." And even in everyday life you have unusual experiences here and there.
Examples, please.
I once parked my car incorrectly. In other words, one front wheel just touched the adjacent parking space, but everything around it was clear. 30 minutes later, I had a Post-it note on my windshield: "Learn how to park straight! Learn how to park straight!" My car also had a sticker on the back with the email address of New Zealand Football. It felt like every time I changed lanes on the highway, an email was sent to the office asking them to send the driver of the vehicle in question to driving school or to check their alcohol level. At some point, I was accused of misusing my expenses because I always paid for everyone's lunch after the weekly meetings with my staff. That's when I realized that things were coming to an end...
And in terms of sport?
Great satisfaction and pure fun. The team was young, receptive and made rapid progress. In a short space of time, we turned a team that defended in their own 16 and hoped for counter-attacks into a proactive team that played brisk pressing and cheeky attacking football. Des Buckingham, my assistant at the time, who now coaches Oxford United FC in the English Championship, reported that a physiotherapist said to him in disbelief during a match: Wow, we're really playing football.
What do you conclude from these adventures?
You have to adapt and accept that you will always be a foreigner. Even as a "farang" in Malaysia (2014-2018, ed.), as foreigners with white skin are called there. Everyday life in Kuala Lumpur was a fantastic enrichment - also for my family. But as Technical Director, I came up against granite. I often thought that nobody was interested in what I was saying. After my first meeting with the technical committee, I was so exasperated that I wanted to get on the next plane and go back home to Switzerland to work for any fourth division club.
What advice do you have for coaches who want to move abroad?
You have to be prepared to accept and embrace the people and culture in your new environment. You are and always will be the foreigner, the "farang". Or the "Obruni", the "white" - that's what I was called in Ghana, as a trainer for the Kotoku Royals, where I was the only one with light skin in a city with a population of around 80,000. They had their own rules there too. Prayers were said before and after every training session, before every game, after every game, even before and after every bus ride, Reverend Dompreh at the front of the bus, where the head coach normally sits. There is singing in the dressing room, match balls and football boots are sprinkled with magic water to drive away evil spirits. And as a coach you still want to give tactical instructions? Forget it! The crazy thing is, you win that way too: in the end, we got promoted to the Premier League and developed a lot of young players. Such successes give you a deep inner satisfaction.
When you look back, is there anything you regret?
The thing with Claudio Saputelli - a striker at Racing Club Zurich, my first coaching position. I substituted him at half-time in a second division game in Mönchaltorf and then took him off again after around twenty minutes. It was completely excessive, a purely educational measure by an ambitious young coach that had no influence on the course of the game at any point - I never apologized to him for it. Making up for that would be worth a large crate of beer to me today.
Where will we be seeing you soon?
I'm open to many things. I'm currently working on some exciting mandates as a technical consultant for UEFA, where I'm also involved in coach education. Every now and then I get involved as a mentor in clubs and associations, in the summer I was a volunteer for Match Organization at the EURO in Gelsenkirchen, and very sporadically I've been on the field as an assistant coach for the C-juniors of FC Celerina in the Engadine for some time now. There's only one thing I'm pretty sure of.
And that is?
That I'll ever work in professional Swiss football again. Those days are definitely over.
