SC YF Juventus v FC Zürich II
The other Juvé. They were formed in 1992 when Young Fellows Zürich (founded in 1904) merged with Società Calcistica Italiana Juventus Zurigo (1922). The result - SportClub Young Fellows Juventus. We'll call them Juvé! It's fine to do that because there is really no confusing them with their illustrious Italian namesakes. As you might expect, they have a few Italian-speaking fans and they do play in the famous black and white stripes. But this is Zürich's third club. The super league "giants", Grasshoppers and FC Zürich are not able to sell out the 30000 seat Letzigrund unless Juventus from Turin come visiting. So the othe Juvé hardly need Stadio del Alpi.
So what have they got? - Well apparently it isn't good enough. Juvé finished third in the inaugural season of the erste Liga promotion just 2 points behind champions, Schaffhausen. Second, level on points were Basel II, who due to league rules cannot be promoted anyway. Juvé had been told they wouldn't be promoted due to a lack of facilities. How embarrassing would it be had the champions of the SFA's new league been refused promotion?
Points time.
Getting There
7 / 10. Where exactly is there? After a frustrating morning trying to find fireworks in Zürich, we'd had to give up the search and find Juchof. The SBB timetable sent us to Zürich Altstetten and then recommended Minibus 307. Now here's where it went wrong. Usually, Zürich buses are great, showing the next 3 or 4 stops on your journey. But that's buses, not minibuses. Minibuses tell you nothing but their final destination. Our phones came to the rescue, telling us that Vulkanstrasse, on which you find Sportanlage Juchof was the first stop.
Juchof is indeed on Vulkanstrasse. It's just at the opposite end of Vulkanstrasse to where the Vulkanstrasse bus stop is situated. It is of course situated right bang next to the bus stop called "Juchof" - funny that! So the IPhone gets a 1 / 10 on this occasion. I'm honest enough to give Juvé 7 / 10 in the "getting there" category. I can't penalize them when I'm the idiot, after all, I'm sure the bus driver would have known.
We knew when we'd got to the ground because it's presence was given away by 4 or 5 spectators watching the match from the road behind the goal. Pay your 10 Francs and watch them properly you skinflints! Like all Swiss erste Liga promotion sides, they need your money!
But let's be fair, perhaps their problem was that they could not find the turnstiles. That would be because there aren't any. But there is a gap in the fence! You get in there!
Friendliness
5 / 10. Juvé do get points for being very trusting. Nobody was sitting by the gap in the fence taking any money, but we figured we should pay somebody for our entertainment. An area along the touchline was taped off. Should we go thorough? You can be shot for less in Germany, but the Swiss tend to be a little more chilled about such things so we risked it. Not a word from anyone. We got to the other end of the pitch, went up some steps where we finally found someone eager to take our 10 Francs.
So at least 5 people per week watch from the road so pay nothing. How many more come in and don't pay, either intentionally or because they simply don't find anyone to pay?
Trusting bunch!
Safety
3 / 10. Juchof is what it is - a community sports ground. No terracing to fall down, more "stand behind these railings". The taped off area along the touchline, we later discovered, is simply to give substitutes an area where they can warm up as there are no run-off areas from the pitch. To get to the pitch, the players simply walk from the clubhouse through whatever crowd is present. In short, it's a Sunday League ground, but a reasonable one.
View
3 / 10. See above. No terraces mean that were there a crowd, everyone is on the same level. Unless of course you want to watch from the road, or climb the steps to the clubhouse to watch through quite a hefty fence.
Atmosphere
3 / 10. Bless 'em. The Juvé fans were reasonably vocal and had banners and flags. Couple that with a reasonable turn out for FCZs under 21s and it wasn't too bad. But a meagre crowd is a meagre crowd - I'd say 200 turned out to watch.
Refreshments
9 / 10. Surprisingly very good! We had a selection of food and in particular soft-drinks available that would put some of the big-boys to shame. Sure, the clubhouse is more canteen than football club but they have expanded significantly beyond the beer and sausage available at just about every Swiss football club.
Overall
30 / 60. Sunday League standard - you can certainly understand why Juvé's progress up the leagues is limited by their ground.
The Match
Not the best I'm afraid, but maybe if we'd got off the bus at the right stop and arrived on time it would have been better? - perhaps not.
True, it was already 0 : 1 when we arrived, Elvedin Causi scoring for the visitors but I can't tell you any more than that. They really should have made it two after 37 minutes when the Juvé keeper, Dragan Djukic went to meet a runner advancing towards the right hand side of his area. The ball was cleverly pulled back to the middle of the penalty area leaving Djukic nowhere but somehow, Ricardo Rodriguez skied his shot.
The visitors were made to pay. On 42 minutes, Raul Cabanas curled in a free-kick and the home time were level for all of three minutes before snatching an unlikely lead from the penalty spot before half time. Right-back, Yves Oehri, looking more like the winger he had looked like all afternoon, was brought down as his cross found its mark and was headed home, but the referee had blown for the foul prior to the ball going in the net. David Blumer scored the penalty, sparing the referee the embarrassment of having stopped play too soon.
After 55 minutes it was Juvé's turn to miss a "sitter", and this one was even more astonishing than Zürich's "conversion" in the first half. The ball was played wide onto the left where the winger beat his man before pulling a ball back beating the goalkeeper in the process. The ball rolled across the 6-yard area where a Juvé striker was waiting. He swung, he missed. Highly embarrassing, lucky for him, I didn't get his name or he would be speeding eternity in black and white for his error.
It was about the only exciting incident of the second half and the game petered out. Final score, 2 : 1 to Juvé. Memorable only for the wrong reasons.
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