After the Bernese Young Boys, FC St.Gallen also suffered a heavy defeat on the European stage. Is this a bad sign for Swiss football? The blue Sport experts assess the situation.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- On Tuesday, Bern's Young Boys go down 5-0 away to Barcelona in the Champions League.
- On Thursday, FC St.Gallen were hit. The team from eastern Switzerland conceded 2:6 in Bruges.
- Swiss football is not looking good at the moment, says blue Sport expert Daniel Gygax.
- At least FC Lugano, the third Swiss representative, won its opening game 3:0.
This is certainly not how FC St.Gallen imagined their big return to European business. In their first match against Belgian representative Cercle Brugge , the Espen go down 2:6.
"We learned a lot," admitted FCSG coach Enrico Maassen after the game, adding: "It was our first time at this level. We now have to quickly learn to defend better." The 40-year-old's conclusion is clear: "We clearly and deservedly lost today."
Captain Görtler echoed the same sentiment. "6:2! A lot must have gone wrong. It feels brutally bitter." The 30-year-old knows that things didn't go right at the front and back. "Of the six goals, we were too far away from the opponent for three or four of them. That is punished coldly. On the other hand, we lacked the effectiveness that our opponents had."
A bad sign for Swiss football?
The two clear defeats of YB and St.Gallen raise the question in the blue Sport studio as to what kind of image Swiss football is presenting. "Not a good one at the moment," says blue Sport expert Daniel Gygax. "YB are not doing so well in this big Champions League table. Neither is St. Gallen."
However, the ex-NATO player immediately reassures. "But of course, YB played against Barcelona. We know that there are a lot of games. A lot can happen and things can look completely different the next matchday."
Gygax's hopes that Lugano would save Swiss football's honor in the late game against Helsinki were fulfilled after a clear 3:0 victory for the Ticino side.
Nevertheless, FC St.Gallen's performance in Belgium was not good enough. Markus Neumayr agrees. The Austrian believes it is primarily the responsibility of the Espen's leading players. "Quintilla was practically unnoticeable today - in no way, not for a minute. Especially when you fall behind early on, you need guys like that on the pitch. In my opinion, you also need a different body language from players like Quintilla and Görtler," criticized the blue Sport expert.
However, the FCSG captain himself doesn't see everything as negative: "If we had known before the game that we would get so many transition moments and have so many good situations with the ball in the opponent's penalty area, then we probably would have signed that."
After a 6:2 defeat, however, Görtler admits that there is no other option but to say that the performance was not good enough. "Tick it off, there's nothing else to do."