FC Lausanne Sport v FC Sion
With the success of London 2012 slowly coming to an end, what could be more appropriate than a visit to the Olympic Stadium in Lausanne to continue our review of Swiss football stadia? The Olympics were held in Lausanne in....well I can't remember precisely when at the moment but they have an olympic stadium so I guess they must have been!
Of course, Lausanne is the home of the International Olympic Committee. The city proudly announces itself as "Capitale Olympique" just outside the main station. I guess then that makes Zürich the "Capital of Football" as FIFA's HQ is based there? Perhaps not!
Lausanne is the fifth-largest city in Switzerland and sits on the North Bank of lake Geneva. The country around it is beautiful (it's Switzerland) but after visiting a year or so ago, I've never really been a fan of the city. That is probably unfair. On the visit my good lady wife had to use a particularly disgusting toilet and I think that coloured the day. Certainly, I would say looking out of the bus window on our way to the ground, it looked nice enough.
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| Hard-earned Olympic Rings |
That brings me neatly on to travel to the ground. Its no problem. A No. 1 bus takes you from the main train station directly to the stadium. We were hardly waiting at all for buses and the journey takes about 20 minutes.
Those hard-earned Olympic Rings make the stadium look impressive from the front gate, but unfortunately this is where my good instant impression ended.
It wasn't helped by the most anally-retentive security on entering the ground that I have thus far experienced, and I was at the Zürich Derby, remember!
"Das ist verboten!, Das ist verboten!" chanted the security guard as he went through my rucksack. I was really given a recollection of Douglas Adams' wonderful Vogons. "Resistance is Useless!" He had taken offence to an empty glass bottle that I had forgotten to throw away (fair enough), a small, plastic water-bottle and an orange-juice carton. Obviously, there's serious damage that can be caused with an orange-juice carton!
Now the silly bit (and I have come across this before). The contents of the carton and the water-bottle are not verboten so I was given two, half-litre plastic beakers in which to decant them. Now, the empty glass bottle was a vodka bottle so the liquid in the water bottle was not the Evian water indicated. I'd deliberately poured the vodka into the Evian bottle so as not to have problems with a glass bottle in the stadium. The problem now was that I had
- One extremely strong vodka and orange in the beaker from which I was planning to drink vodka orange during the match
- About 400 ml of vodka in an open plastic beaker
- Half a litre of orange juice in another open plastic beaker
- An empty glass vodka bottle (still)
- An empty orange juice carton (still)
- An empty Evian bottle (still).
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| Drab, concrete montrosity |
You see, you can put closed plastic bottles and cartons in bags. Open plastic beakers, sadly don't work that way.
Security-negotiated we had our first look at the stadium within the gates. My first analogy was that it looked like Nazi architecture. I have since revised that. I've seen Nazi architecture in Berlin and Nuremburg, the Nazis were actually pretty serious about their architecture, wanting to look grandious and powerful. This was communist architecture. A great, ugly concrete monstrosity.
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| Sion - Champions League Winners 1997 |
On our walk around we noticed some interesting things though.
Sion's team bus for instance that commemorates their past glories. Swiss league titles, Swiss cup wins, their champions league win. Champions League win? Yes, there it was, in 1997. Remember it? It was when Lausanne held the Olympics!
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| A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,V,8...X, Y, Z? |
We then found a worrying example of Swiss education standards as we tried to find our seats. Gate J, K, L, M, V....V? Carry on walking around it will all explain itself. The next gate was gate 8 (obviously) which happened to be ours!
Once inside the stadium, things did improve The stadium is much nicer inside than it is outside, although as it name suggests, you do have an 8-lane running track plus all the additional space for athletic field events between you and the pitch. I've seen much worse though.
Score time!
Getting There
8/10. No problem at all. The stadium quite a distance from the main station in Lausanne so it takes about 20 minutes on the bus. But the buses are regular and stop right outside.
Friendliness
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| What charming people some Sion fans are! |
2/10. Harsh? Well the security leaving me with that dangerous orange juice carton and no means of disposal didn't help. My wife didn't appreciate being forced to get pissed. She prefers to do that in her own good time so she also wasn't happy. Then we had the experience of being ragged, bagged and shagged in Lausanne's merchandising stall. Two Lausanne crests to hang in cars at 12 SFr each (about £8.50)! Looking across at the Sion fans at the other end of the stadium we saw these charming banners! Security - this is what you should be confiscating as there is no place for this kind of fan-provocation in football.
OK - we had no problems at all sitting in the Lausanne kop. In fact we were barely acknowledged.
Safety
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| Fences where we were but not in the neighbouring stand - strange |
4/10. Fences again although there is some kind of prejudice regarding where the fences are. The home kop get those high fences that bend over at the top; away fans get the same, plus netting all around them. The rest of the fans look to be behind a perimeter fence of a much more sensible and safe height. I'm not sure of the logic of that but am sure all the fences are completely unnecessary.
The stadium is an all-seater meaning that the terracing steps are quite high. In the kop, the seats are very basic plastic seats with no back, resulting in many fans choosing to stand. You then have that combination of relatively high terrace steps, standing fans and no crush barriers.
Security, as I've said was over-done on entry but barely noticeable once in your seat.
Bearing in mind what we experienced, you have to wonder how it is that we bought our tickets and chose our seat, right in the middle of the Lausanne kop, from miles away in Winterthur. Could Sion fans have purchased the same seats? I'm sure they could. So again we have a contradiction in the security activities. Bags are being searched and ridiculously benign things are being removed and yet nothing prevents fans mixing within the stadium.
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| Its an OK view - as long as you stand. |
View
6/10. Difficult to mark in a way. The stadium is an all-seater but as I have indicated, in our area the preference was to stand. So if you are seated, you see very little. Stand up and it was OK. There was that athletics track that puts too much distance between the fans and the pitch but the view is OK.
Atmosphere
8/10. The best atmosphere yet without Winterthur fans being involved so well done FC Lausanne and their fans. The club, unlike others I have encountered, are smart enough to realise that if you are only going to half-fill a stadium (there were 8750 in attendance), then the atmosphere is improved if half the ground is closed. Two large areas at either end of the stadium were completely empty, meaning the rest was quite full, so concentrating noise. And speaking of noise, the FC Lausanne kop did not stop singing and chanting throughout the game, apart from two 20 second spells of incredulous silence when the Sion goals went in! Great effort Lausanne!
Refreshments
5/10. Feldschlösschen beer, which I don't particularly like and didn't sample so I cannot tell you a price. On my search for something at half-time, I found a pizza restaurant inside the ground. Unfortunately, it did not look like they were serving pizza to take-away, though I could have been mistaken so I settled for a sausage and bread, 3 different sausages were available but I didn't see much else apart from chips. The score would have been better had I found the illusive pizza.
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| Another great setting for a stadium. |
Redeeming Feature
Once again, one of those great Swiss backdrops for the stadium.
Overall 33/60
The Match
It was OK. To start with FC Sion were in total control and when Kyle Lafferty's cross was headed in by Vilmos Vanczak on 12 minutes, it was no more than they deserved. Lausanne did rally though and had two very presentable chances before half time. Really they should have been level but for poor finishing.
In the second, Sion gradually regained the control that they had had in the first 20 minutes. For the second goal, they broke through the Lausanne defence on a counter-attack and Xavier Margairaz finished well with a low shot on 84 minutes.
As a final word, I thought FC Lausanne's reaction to the fans at the end of the game was pretty poor. Six of them managed to walk over to a spot just inside the half of the pitch at the kop end. This to acknowledge home support that had backed them vocally from start to finish. They may even have come within 50 yards of the kop! What a shame that some sportsmen are not able to properly acknowledge those people who put them where they are.
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