The once dominant club is looking for its DNA. With the change of the sports director there is another personnel change.
Martin Plüss (left) and Patrik Bärtschi (right) have been close since their time in Kloten and are now getting together again in Bern.
Walter Bieri / Keystone
SC Bern is doing better in terms of sport, but it can’t calm down in terms of personnel. On Thursday morning he announced that sports director Andrew Ebbett would have to leave the club at the end of the season and would be replaced by Patrik Bärtschi. The new sports director Martin Plüss says: “We have agreed for a long time that this decision makes sense for both sides.”
As a player, the 41-year-old Canadian was one of the key figures in the Bernese team’s successful sporting phase with three championship titles between 2016 and 2019. Since then, the big club has been in a slump and in search of consistency. Since the separation from Sven Leuenberger, who worked as sports director for SCB for nine years, Alex Chatelain, Florence Schelling, Raeto Raffainer and Andrew Ebbett have tried to lead the club. Only Chatelain was successful.
Change in the sports director position: Patrik Bärtschi will succeed Andrew Ebbett after this season.
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Ebbett caused irritation with his personnel castling
There are certainly plausible reasons for the separation from Ebbett. The Canadian had recently caused irritation, especially with his activism and with player deceptions that were difficult to understand. So he brought Marco Maurer from Geneva and Simon Kindschi from Kloten. Both are types of players that you should actually recruit from your own youth.
These personnel castling did not contribute to the calm. Plüss is quoted in the club’s media release as saying that it would be advantageous for the strategic direction to make an adjustment to the position of sports director. Bärtschi played for SCB for three years during his active career before ending his career with the ZSC Lions. The 39-year-old then briefly gained experience as a sports director at his parent club Kloten. Most recently he worked as the head of a sports school. The new sports director and his future boss know each other from their time together in the youth ranks of the former Kloten Flyers.
Bern also recently made headlines with Marc Lüthi’s resignation. The strongman returned to the operational role of CEO after just a year as president. The club parted ways with Raeto Raffainer, whom SCB poached from Davos in February 2020 and who was supposed to be the successor to the charismatic Lüthi, after just three years. Castling also occurred again and again in the coaching position. How long the current coach Jussi Tapola can last remains to be seen. The Finn has not yet been able to stabilize the team on the ice as hoped.
Martin Plüss has a lot of work ahead of him
Nevertheless, SC Bern is on course for direct play-off qualification before the final qualifying spurt. More alarming than the performances on the ice is the disorientation of the club off it. The SCB is obviously looking for its DNA. Your own players leave him without necessity. The talented defender Mika Henauer is moving to the Rapperswil-Jona Lakers, the striker Joshua Fahrni is moving to Langnau. They are following the example of other promising juniors such as André Heim, Marco Müller and Samuel Kreis, who were only able to establish themselves in the league and in the extended circle of the national team after moving from Bern. Kreis has now returned to Bern.
Martin Plüss will not officially take up his job as sports director until spring. But one thing is already certain: he won’t run out of work in Bern. But the former Kloten junior has already proven that he knows how to assert himself and his ideas. This can only mean good things for SC Bern.