The Grasshoppers belong to a new foreign owner, the FCZ is giving its Swiss sports director unexpected power. At first glance, the clubs differ significantly – but in reality their paths are similar.
FCZ and GC: Which scarf belongs to which club?
Goran Basic / NZZ
Perhaps October 1, 2023 will one day find its way into the annals of FC Zurich as a turning point. On that Monday, FCZ President Ancillo Canepa officially introduced the new sports director Milos Malenovic. The date has been fixed for some time and it has actually been clear for months that Malenovic will take over the position.
According to Canepa, it took him “five minutes” to know that the 38-year-old would be responsible for the sporting fortunes of his FC Zurich. It is one of many suggestions that Malenovic is being introduced as more than the man who observes players and makes transfer recommendations to the president. With Malenovic, the man of the FCZ future sits next to the president.
Like an old, satisfied farmer: Ancillo Canepa, FCZ President.
Severin Bigler / Keystone
Malenovic is a successful player agent with his own agency, he has traveled widely and has contacts with big clubs and expensive players and less expensive ones, some of whom also play in the FCZ. During his introduction, Malenovic talks primarily about his early days as an FCZ boy, about his family and children, and about his dream, which he was able to live in his “heart club” thanks to the Canepa couple.
Canepa is happy. Satisfied like the old farmer in the wood-panelled room who informs the assembled family that the boy next to him will soon take over the farm if he proves himself in the fields and in the stables. Canepa beams. Malenovic beams.
Heliane Canepa calls out “age discrimination” when asked whether the family is thinking about handing the club over to younger hands at some point. The woman at the president’s side appears half outraged, half amused. “Certainly not,” she says. Meanwhile, it has become clear that Malenovic is taking control in a way that Canepa would never have allowed others to do in his more than fifteen years as FCZ patron.
The new strong man: Milos Malenovic, FCZ sports director.
Goran Basic / NZZ
Malenovic is whirling around the club, hiring, reorganizing, dismissing and bringing on new players. There are a dozen mutations among trainers and supervisors alone, and the management is also new. In short: Malenovic has the power to shape a future that the Canepa family knows they will no longer be a part of.
GC wants to become visible again in Zurich
The Grasshoppers also claim the right to a future. The club has been doing this with poor success for over twenty years, the last time GC became champions. But what October 1, 2023 was for FCZ, January 31, 2024 could be for GC: the turning point for a future that will resemble the glorious old days.
Instead of Chinese, Americans are now the owners of Grasshoppers. They call themselves Los Angeles FC. The name alone sounds like a promise: departure, future, optimism. At least that is the message that was conveyed on the Wednesday before last when the change of ownership was announced in the time-honored space in the boathouse of the GC rowing section.
The LAFC has sent well-known personalities to Zurich to officialize the takeover: Larry Freedman is co-managing director of the soccer franchise, Stacy Johns is chief financial officer and now president of the GC board of directors. They sit at a wooden table with blue and white banderoles that, from a distance, are reminiscent of an Oktoberfest.
Wants to attract people back to the stadium: Stacy Johns, GC President.
Michael Buholzer / Keystone
The business lawyer András Gurovits, representative of the GC Foundation, explains and acknowledges the change of hands from China to the USA. With the Californian’s childlike fervor, Freedman raves about what came to mind when Gurovits told him about a match against Real Madrid. Real! Madrid! 45 years ago.
The Americans want to go there again with the bargain GC, on the big stage, among the glamorous names of the famous clubs. How this is supposed to work is not yet so clear, but it is also not that important these days. Stacy Johns reports on hard work and says that they want to bring people back to the stadium. Sporting success is the easiest way to achieve this, of course, but it is also about understanding the “GC family” as a “community” and making its “deep roots” in the city visible again.
It is a beautiful castle in the air that the Americans paint in the cloudless blue sky over Zurich. The castle in the air is captured in the photo montage that was thought up for the announcement of the takeover: the thrown-together city, the lake, the snow mountains and lots of air above – there is the black and gold LAFC club crest next to the GC logo . Our sky knows no limit.
The gesture seems like the opposite of what has been going on at the FCZ for a few months: If the new spirit at GC comes from far away California in the form of the super-rich uncle with glamorous relationships with stars and starlets, at the FCZ there is a modest boy from Wollishofen for departure. But this contrast is misleading. Rather the opposite is the case – the two Zurich clubs are moving towards the future in a much more similar way than it appears from the outside.
While LAFC not only offers the Swiss branch financial security, but also access to an extensive network of players and know-how, Malenovic also uses contacts from his time as a player agent to activate connections in the new football world of networks. Ricardo Moniz, initially head of player development and recently also coach of the U21s, is an example of a personality with which the FCZ wants to make itself interesting as a development club.
Malenovic prescribes a new DNA for the FCZ
Like the new head of training, Sascha Milicevic, Moniz gained experience at Red Bull Salzburg, which, with its transfer successes, is still considered a role model for “academization” in the business. In practice, this means that Malenovic expects an identical style at every level: fast, intensive, technically flawless.
In order to make a name for yourself in the player business, the DNA of the FCZ must be clear internally and externally. Malenovic learned that from Salzburg, Hoffenheim, Ajax Amsterdam. Anyone who doesn’t go along with the implementation of the plan is left out, like Genesio Colatrella, who was recently dismissed.
GC Zurich becomes part of the global vision @LAFC 🤝
ℹ️ Grasshopper Club Zurich today entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Los Angeles Football Club.#gc #zürich #traditionsclub
— Grasshopper Club Zurich (@gc_zuerich) January 17, 2024
Such plans please a president like Canepa. He was always enthusiastic when it came to big ideas. If he was able to score a penalty at San Siro in Milan, he was happy. When he gave a speech to FC Bayern grandees Uli Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge on the Üetliberg, he was proud. But unlike FC Basel or the Young Boys, Canepa and his FCZ were never able to establish themselves sustainably as a reservoir of players or as a club to which a big club would entrust a talent for further training. That should now change with Malenovic.
The coming balance sheets of any transfer surpluses will show how quickly this happens. Bo Henriksen is currently a head coach who is very uninterested in future plans. He is only concerned with success in the next game and less with the question of what the role of the head coach looks like in the overall structure.
Malenovic said they had respect for Henriksen’s results. That’s why the coach forms a probationary marriage of convenience with Canepa and Malenovic. It should end at the end of the season at the latest. Maybe earlier if good results don’t appear in the next few weeks.
Fervent enthusiasm: Harald Gärtner, European boss of Los Angeles FC.
Michael Buholzer / Keystone
The Americans are not yet at the point where they are thinking about whether the head coach is right for them or not. Harald Gärtner is the name of the man who looks at the conditions on the campus in Niederhasli for LAFC. After many years in Ingolstadt and Klagenfurt, Gärtner has a considerable network and access to interesting transfer options via LAFC’s Red&Gold joint venture with Bayern Munich. What emerges from this remains open. The ownership structure dictates the international structure. Now this structure must be filled with a managing director, with staff, with players, with life.
At FCZ it’s the other way around: the club is full of life. Now he wants to set about giving this liveliness an international structure.
An article from “NZZ am Sonntag”