The Young Boys give up their top scorer to Serie B club Como in the middle of the championship race. It’s not the first time that YB has surprisingly said goodbye to a deserving footballer – but never has it seemed so risky.
Farewell without sunshine: The three-time top scorer Jean-Pierre Nsame is leaving YB after five championship titles.
Peter Schneider / Keystone
As YB club legend Guillaume Hoarau recently said in the NZZ: “YB has become a strong institution. I can’t say that the decision against me in 2020 was wrong.”
These words are important when it comes to classifying the latest decision from this Bernese football institution called YB. Jean-Pierre Nsame sold the leadership around the board of directors Christoph Spycher and the sports director Steve von Bergen to the top Serie B club Como, six months before the end of the contract. The transfer fee should be between 500,000 and 750,000 francs.
Nsame will be 31 years old in May and he is second in the Super League top scorers list with nine goals, although he only started twelve times. In 2020, 2021 and 2023, Nsame was the league’s top goalscorer, scoring a total of 109 Super League goals, only two goals short of Marco Streller’s record.
In other words: Nsame is a small, strong institution in its own right. And now, shortly before the winter transfer window closes, he is in the middle of the race for the sixth championship title with YB.
The Young Boys categorically rejected a transfer to another Swiss club
But there was nothing else left, not Nsame, not YB. In the past few weeks, an estrangement has taken place that seems hardly conceivable for a sporting relationship that is accompanied by so much success. Nsame had publicly complained about not enough playing time, although only one YB striker had more playing minutes (Meschack Elia). During the winter break it was already clear that FC Basel and Servette would like to sign him; But the Young Boys made it clear that they would not agree to a transfer within Switzerland.
Most recently, Nsame is said to have ultimately requested approval for a move to Servette, but YB refused. Nsame then ended a conversation on Monday evening by leaving the room and slamming the door – this was what the “Tribune de Genève” read, according to information from the “Nsame clan”. What can also be heard in the YB environment is that the conversation took place late on Monday afternoon and that Nsame did not slam the door.
When it comes to such distinctions, it is a clear sign that two parties have no choice but to go their separate ways; that YB decides against the club legend Nsame.
Nsame stood in the shadow of Hoarau – and rose to become a regular striker
And so back to Hoarau, who at the beginning of 2024 did not dare to claim that the 2020 decision against him was wrong. It was a remarkable admission of YB’s decision at the time not to extend the contract with Hoarau. Hoarau, a club legend, 36 at the time. He was a defining figure when YB became champions again in 2018 for the first time in 32 years. In this 2017/18 championship season, Hoarau scored 15 goals in 25 league games and started 20 times. Hoarau: the regular striker.
Nsame, on the other hand, scored 13 goals in 31 games in the aforementioned championship season, coming off the bench 17 times. Nsame: the substitute striker, as was the case on April 28, 2018, when YB needed a win at home against Lucerne to secure the title. Nsame came onto the field in the 74th minute and scored the decisive 2-1 in the 89th minute. A quarter of an hour was enough for him to become unforgettable early on.
The goal for the first YB championship title in 32 years: Jean-Pierre Nsame scored 2-1 against FC Luzern on April 28, 2018.
Youtube
Everything that came next, all the other championship titles in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023, the cup victories in 2020 and 2023, the endless goals, the promotion to regular striker, to Hoarau 2.0 – none of that would have been needed for Nsame’s image. But this unpleasant end in January 2024 wouldn’t have been necessary either.
It wasn’t the first time that Nsame had pushed for a change by any means necessary
But Nsame often needed little, just like: little time. This season he has averaged a goal every 116 minutes. But now he would have liked more, more undisputed recognition, an extension of the contract beyond the summer of 2024, reportedly on better terms. YB, however, was not prepared to respond to the financial demands, nor to the request for more playing time, because in addition to Nsame, there are other physically strong strikers in the squad.
«I don’t want to take anyone for a fool, and I don’t want to be taken for a fool myself. I knew what I wanted, so I looked for it,” said Nsame in July 2020 in the “NZZ am Sonntag”. It was about how Nsame forced the move to YB in 2017, for example with a training strike, at Servette of all places, where he wanted to return seven years later. That’s why these words are important when it comes to classifying the latest YB development: because it wasn’t the first time that Nsame had used all sorts of means to push for a transfer; because he knows what he wants.
The Young Boys, on the other hand, have become “a strong institution” because they were ready to say goodbye to crowd favorites, from Hoarau and Marco Wölfli in 2020, from Miralem Sulejmani in 2022. But the separation from Nsame seems most risky, his sporting influence has recently been greater than the importance of Hoarau, Wölfli or Sulejmani in their last seasons; Hoarau, for example, only scored 2 goals in 17 league games in the last YB year.
Three multiple YB champion strikers: Jean-Pierre Nsame, Guillaume Hoarau and Roger Assalé (from left to right).
Anthony Anex / Keystone
Now YB is relying on Silvere Ganvoula for the role of the robust striker, who only has 4 goals after 17 league games; and Cedric Itten, who has been scoring regularly since moving to YB in mid-2022, but has already been out for 80 days. With full-back Ulisses Garcia, the Bernese team recently let another long-standing top performer move to Marseille for a few million francs.
They are brave decisions, and if YB becomes champions again in the spring, no one will be able to say they were wrong. The Bernese have often been right – just not in spring 2022, after they gave up four important players during the winter break, including Nsame, on loan to Venice. Exactly, it often took little. Nsame was only missing from YB for a few months – but they were enough for YB to miss out on the championship title, the only time in the past six years.