No, I haven't lost my marbles, FC Biel - Bienne, the only club I know with a hyphen in their name, are currently temporary tenants in Neuchâtel Xamax's Stade de la Maladière while their own stadium, the Gurzelen Stadion is renovated. Sadly, the renovations mean that we will not be visiting the Gurzelen on the Swiss 36 tour, well, at least not this season. On the plus side, Biel - Bienne's temporary move to Neuchâtel gives us a valid excuse to visit Stade de la Maladière.
Until January 2012, Xamax were a Swiss Super League side, but that status ended suddenly and in controversy. 12th May 2011, Chechen businessman, Bulat Chagaev took over the club. Immediately he demonstrated a strange motivational technique. Xamax had made it to the Swiss Cup final on 29th May but were trailing Sion 2 : 0. Chagaev reportedly entered the dressing room at half-time shouting "I'll kill you all" in an attempt to motivate the Xamax players. Xamax didn't concede any more goals but didn't score any either.
A day later and the coach, Bernhard Challendes was fired, the administrative staff resigned 3 days later. These were the first in quite a number of employees who became casualties during Chagaev's reign, including sporting director, ex Brazil ace Sonny Anderson. By the end of July, Chagaev was claiming to be the victim of a conspiracy against him (I struggle to think why such a nice guy could think such a thing!). August saw Chagaev fire his newly appointed chairman shortly before firing his second coach at the beginning of September. By the end of September, the supporter's club had been "dumped" and shortly after that the Swiss football league filed their first complaint against Chagaev and Xamax over "lack of information about the takeover".
October saw an agent file a bankruptcy case against the club; a strike by the players' union over non-payment of wages and the firing of a second sporting director. In November, the Bank of America confirmed that documents Chagaev had used to demonstrate how he had access to $35M were fake and he was formerly charged with forgery.
The inevitable eventually happened in January as somewhat predictably, the players returned from a Dubai training camp. They found out that the Swiss football league had withdrawn Xamax's licence due to suspected fraud and failure to demonstrate that they could meet their financial obligations. Chagaev was arrested in Geneva accused of fraud and financial mis-management. The debt of the club was estimated at at 30M Swiss Francs.
Xamax didn't play another match that season and their results were expunged from league records. The Swiss football league punished Xamax in a similar way to the punishment of Rangers in Scotland only Xamax were relegated four divisions as opposed to the three division relegation suffered by Rangers. In 2012 / 13, they play their football in the 2. Liga Interregional - Group 3, an amateur, regional league in the fifth tier of Swiss football.
And Chagaev? Well after serving 4 months in custody, he is now facing expulsion from Switzerland.
Time to talk about Biel - Bienne, and I should deal with that hyphen. Biel - Bienne, like Freiburg - Fribourg and Bern - Berne, sits on the Röstigraben (lit. Rösti-ditch), the boundary between French-speaking Switzerland and German-speaking Switzerland. The name is a tongue-in-cheek term basically suggesting that you won't get anything as mundane as a Rösti (a very tasty German-Swiss dish with grated potato as its main ingredient) in the sophisticated French speaking bit. Biel - Bienne tend to make a bigger deal of sitting on this boundary than the other towns and cities on the line hence the name of the club being such that none of the local population is inadvertently insulted. But, for me, it's a pain in the bum, so they are plain Biel from now on!
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| 3G, Streaming and a Phone - The answer to split loyalties |
On the day of this match, I faced a big dilemma. My hometown club, Doncaster Rovers are leading English League 1 and were playing a crucial game against fourth placed Swindon Town. Very unusually for Doncaster, this match was being televised live. But then there was my adopted Swiss side, FC Winterthur visiting FC Biel and playing in a stadium that otherwise was not going to get a Swiss 36 visit due to the extreme naughtiness of the resident club. What to do?!
Obviously, I decided, as all should that watching football live in a stadium should take precedence over watching football on TV. So off we set, with me moaning just a little bit.
"I wish I could watch the Rovers AND go to to game" I complained.
Wait a minute. If this match was being streamed, surely I could stream it to my IPhone? It was a great plan and thanks to a great link supplied by my forum friends and Puffin Browser, I was able to watch the whole of the match from South Yorkshire mostly during the train journey to Neuchâtel.
Points Time.
Getting There.
9 / 10. Really easy on the train as Neuchâtel is on the main Zürich / Geneva line, and so it was a single train from Winterthur. From the station, the stadium was about 10 minutes walk. I didn't see any signposts, but I don't think I took my eyes off my phone screen long enough to see any!
Friendliness.
5 / 10. Just as we were climbing the stairs to go into the stadium, Jamie McCoombe scored for Donny and had me bouncing around like a loony. Naturally, I was keen to revel in this moment from every possible angle. While I was reveling, the security guard was wanting to check my rucksack. I unzipped everything and offered it up.
"Is there any food or drink in here?" he asked.
What is this, Swiss "I don't want to do my job" week! I said that I didn't think so.
"What's that?" he asked, gesturing towards the cup of enhanced lemonade that I was holding.
"Can I take it in?"
"No"
"Then I'll stand here and drink it" (there wasn't much left). "Sorry" I added. "This is a really important football match"
That got me a real look of disdain, which was fine because it allowed me to pointedly stand there ignoring him. He wanted the cup though, so I drank up and handed it over.
He then faffed about giving me a cloakroom ticket so the cup could be reclaimed and I went into the stadium to find a quiet corner of the concourse and watch the rest of the game.
Once the distraction of Donny extending their lead in league 1 was over, I was able to look around, and what a great little stadium the Maladière is!
Safety.
7 / 10. The stadium is a modern, 12000 capacity all-seater with a wide and smart concourse all the way
Wearing full FC Winterthur regalia including shirts, scarves and a jacket with a huge FC Winterthur badge on the back, we walked into the home supporters area. We weren't the only ones to make this mistake either. We'd already hung our flags and had gone in search of refreshments when a steward decided to point out that we were in the home fans' area. Our tickets were valid in both the Winterthur and Biel areas, which is also stupid if you are bothering to segregate.
For us, it wouldn't have mattered but on a different game, with more volatile fans, that could have been a problem.
View.
9 / 10. Great all the way around. The only problem would be if you were behind that fenced area.
Atmosphere.
4 / 10. Only 580 attended in the 12000 capacity stadium. The club were sensible enough only to open two sides but its still a few people in amongst a lot of empty seats. All the atmosphere was provided by the 100 or so Winti fans who travelled and made the match a home fixture.
Refreshments.
5 / 10. Mrs Duck and I had quite a tasty burger, which was a welcome departure from the standard sausage. The beer was Heineken, which is bad enough but insisting on selling it in 330ml beakers was just annoying.
Overall.
39 / 60. The stadium is great. They just need to work on the peripherals.
The Match
Could I possibly get a great game to watch live after watching the main event in South Yorkshire ended in the way I wanted? You bet I could!
The opening exchanges were fairly even, an effort from Aratore going wide for the visitors while Biel did manage to bring a save from Leite through Charles Doudin. The game burst into life in the 34th minute. Marco Aratore got free on the right and his cross was clearly handled by Mehdi Challendes. Despite the Grobbelaar-like antics of Mossi, Biel's young 'keeper, Kristian Kuzmanovic made no mistake in hitting the bottom left-corner. A minute later and Winti were back again. This time Aratore didn't want the palaver of a penalty and so he hit an excellent shot into the bottom corner from the edge of the area. For Biel, it was now a case of holding on to half-time to re-group.
This they duly did and after the break they came out guns blazing. Four minutes into the second half, Giuseppe Morello pulled a goal back and four minutes after that he had a brace and it was game on. The home were pushing for a third but in doing so defence was being forgotten and Winterthur did take advantage, Jonas Elmer breaking through and finishing coolly. To finish the scoring, the two-goal lead was restored when Patrick Bengondo put his head where few would dare in making sure a goal-mouth scramble ended up with the ball where it should finish from a attacking side's point of view.
With three minutes to go, Christian Leite showed his opposite number in the Biel goal how a penalty should be handled from a goalkeeping point of view and it was a good afternoon's work for the visitors.
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