After their high in the European Cup, the Geneva team are surprisingly strong as a collective and are also making an exclamation mark in the Super League. Afterwards, Servette trainer René Weiler practices deep stacking.
Helplessness in the YB ranks: The substitutions of Joel Monteiro, Silvere Ganvoula and Darian Males don’t help the Bernese team either.
Peter Schneider / Keystone
The 26-year-old Frenchman Timothé Cognat should actually be playing in Ligue 1. Private connections and a working dedicated line between Lyon and Geneva took him to Switzerland in 2018, where he is still playing football over five years later. Cognat is one of the reasons for the Geneva revival. That’s why it’s not surprising that in Sunday’s top game against YB, the long-running runner brought the ball far into the opponent’s half of the pitch, which enabled Alexis Antunes to make it 1-0, the only goal of this game.
Last Thursday, Servette FC also won 1-0 against Ludogorets Razgrad in Bulgaria and reached the round of 16 of the Conference League – thanks to a goal from Cognat. Coming from Bulgaria, the delegation landed in Payerne on Friday, from where it headed early to Bern. In her luggage she brought with her exuberant eulogies for her actions, which culminate in a sentence in the “Tribune de Genève” according to which one might sometimes believe, when studying style this season, that “Servette is more like YB than YB is itself”.
Daring? After the direct duel on Sunday, the sentence, which is characterized by local color, is a little easier to understand.
Servette is significantly better than YB this Sunday
In any case, the hard-fought game started with the opening goal of the second-placed team in the table, and the leader YB has a character test in front of him that he doesn’t pass. Cognat seemed a bit exhausted in the second half, but coach René Weiler’s technically adept, ball-confident and undoubtedly better team delivered a certificate of maturity as a collective and left Bern with the realization that the championship is not a sure-fire success.
The Young Boys don’t succeed enough, they seem too desperate at times, not homogeneous enough – in contrast to the opponent, whose potency begins with the strong full-backs Keigo Tsunemoto and Bradley Mazikou. The Servette success in the safe construction of the tame Bernese bears brings a strong gust of wind back to the top of the Super League.
𝐎𝐧 𝐧𝐞 𝐬’𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐬… 🎶🇱🇻 pic.twitter.com/5gTTlXaeFO
— Servette FC (@ServetteFC) February 25, 2024
In Bern, audience attendance is also slightly declining, but this is not due to saturation, not to the team’s undoubtedly loss of identification and certainly not to the unresolved coaching question. This is what the new mode brings with it in almost every Swiss stadium – and opponents like Yverdon or Stade Lausanne-Ouchy.
Nevertheless: YB has become a center of attraction, which even temporarily raised the question of whether (only) the capacity of St. Jakob Park, but also that of the Wankdorf Stadium, should have been expanded in view of the Euro 2008 in Switzerland . YB filled the arena in the championship several times this season, including in the Champions League against Leipzig, Manchester City and Red Star Belgrade – and most recently in the Europa League against Sporting Lisbon.
The Genevans only have an audience boom in the European Cup
Servette FC can only dream of that in their Euro 2008 stadium, although they also achieved an average audience of over 20,000 spectators in the European Cup, one level lower, against opponents such as Genk, Glasgow Rangers, Slavia Prague, AS Roma, Sheriff Tiraspol and Ludogorets Razgrad . The Stade de Genève should also be well filled at the beginning of March against Viktoria Pilsen, the opponent in the round of 16 of the Conference League.
The club doesn’t collect Champions League money like YB, but it has also brought in well over 5 million francs in UEFA bonuses so far. If he reaches the quarterfinals against Pilsen, another million will be added.
This is proof of how much the Genevans have progressed, even though their attractiveness in the Super League has not increased. With fewer than 7,000 spectators on average, they are far behind YB, Basel, St. Gallen, FC Zurich and Lucerne. In this respect, Geneva is a tough place. After researching the cause, club representatives say the primary reason for this is that Mr. and Mrs. Geneva are “spoiled.” The cultural offering is considerable in the city, which is characterized by internationality, and the lake, the mountains, the snow and France are close by.
Of course, the change in mode also affects Geneva, although the additional competitors come from Vaud. But there were also closed fan curves due to fan riots, which resulted in fewer than 3,000 people at the Stade de Genève in a December match against Lugano. Unthinkable in Bern.
The Geneva club made a bureaucratic mishap
Not everything shines in Geneva. What is annoying is the fact that the club’s administration did not report the three new players Bassirou N’Diaye (Senegal), Omar Rekik (Netherlands/Tunisia) and Takuma Nishimura (Japan) to the league on time. It is still unclear to what extent the omission can be ironed out subsequently. At least the Geneva team managed to get Nishimura on the match sheet on Sunday.
It’s not the case that Servette coach Weiler can draw on the full range of personnel anyway. Raphael Wicky, his counterpart on Sunday, is a bit ahead of him. But sometimes you can’t shake the feeling that YB is struggling for internal ties because of all the changes and transfers. The bond that the well-rehearsed runner-up in the table finds. Or finds more and more.
René Weiler speaks of “another great evening” in Bern, but he avoids the question of what else is possible with this team. He wants to win titles – and not talk about them. Like in Belgium 2017 (Anderlecht) and Egypt 2020 (al-Ahly). In Switzerland, the project is a long time coming. Why Servette isn’t even closer to YB is another question. Weiler claims time, mentions the departures of Mbabu and Clichy and some injuries. And yes, he has only been working in Geneva since last summer.
René Weiler wants to win titles – and not talk about them.
Peter Schneider / Keystone
While Wicky’s future is open, Servette relies on Weiler. Long-time coach Alain Geiger pushed the club forward in 100-meter units, says Didier Fischer, the strong person in Servette’s background. With Weiler it’s now about refinement, about centimeters. “We wanted to get a plus,” says Fischer, “and we got it.”
Servette’s calculation, which was bitter for Geiger, seems to be working. Geiger had brought the team to second place in the table in 2023 – and still had to give way to Weiler, who scored 11 points more than his predecessor after 25 rounds.