Free-scoring Valencia ran riot to lift LaLiga and help Trebor Mahtal hit the halfway mark on his Alphabet Challenge, in which he bids to win a major trophy with a club beginning with every letter of the alphabet. But the world-class manager was only out of work for two days before being offered an interview.
Indeed, immediately after standing down as Valencia boss, he got a call from Switzerland. And he was only out of work for a week when he got an opportunity to tick off one of the trickier letters of the challenge.
Who Are FC Zürich?
Fussballclub Zürich, also known as FCZ, is a professional club based in Zürich, the largest city in Switzerland in the north of the country. The club was founded on 1 August 1896 by former members of local sides FC Turicum and FC Excelsior, one of whom was a man called Joan Gamper, who went on to found a Spanish club known as FC Barcelona. Zürich won its first title in 1992 and went on to win 12 more up to 2022. It had to wait 19 years for another, but won two more in 2041 and 2043.
FCZ is also the only Swiss team to make the European Cup semi finals more than once, reaching the last four in 1964 and 1977. It plays at the 26,104-capacity Letzigrund, which was built in 1925, and has superb infrastructure of 20 youth recruitment, 19 youth facilities and 18 training facilities and junior coaching. The club competes in the Zürcher derby with fierce rivals Grasshoppers and has a fierce historic rivalry with Basel and other rivalries with St. Gallen and Servette.
Last season, Zürich were predicted to finish 4th and finished 5th in the Raiffeisen Super League, 13 points behind Young Boys, who’ve won the last three titles. But their manager departed to join Bundesliga side 1860 Munchen. So, on the face of it, it appeared to be in a decent position. However, the club finds itself in a challenging financial position with the bank balance £1.6m in the red, a £54k transfer budget and spending £3k over the £300k weekly wage budget.
That was largely due to the first-team squad being full of old 2.5-star players and the youth sides packed with players no potential. So Mahtal wasted no time working his magic in the transfer market, bringing in over £22m for a ludicrous 33 players, which slashed £160k off the wage bill, including the blasphemous sin of selling 33-year-old defender Jesús to Antalyaspor for £3m.
The best players remaining at Zürich were strikers Alex Maudonnet and Aleksandar Basic, 19-year-old goalkeeper Gérard Schonhofer, wingers Steve Roos, Mladen Prijovic and Nebojsa Mitic, centre backs Fabien Pfister and veteran Vincenzo Negro, who’s played a record 565 league games for the club, and midfielder Carlos Fitas.
They also had a mass of promising youngsters in the first team led by 17-year-old midfielder Erhan Corovic, striker Marko Mirvic, midfielder Daniel Walker and 6ft 5in centre back Fynn Doebel. And in the youth teams, they’d apparently just had two golden generations containing 13 players with 5-star potential led by centre back Qlirim Shaqiri, striker Arthur Boli, Emmanuel Benoit and Luca Vaillat and full back Alessandro Gentilini, who were all knocking on the door of the first team.
Given that potential and a lack of scouting ability when he arrived, Mahtal opted not to make any summer signings and rely on youth. He considered retaining the wonderful 4-2-4 he’d used at Valencia but, given a total lack of full backs, he devised an odd-looking 3-5-2 approach that saw Mitic retraining as a midfielder and two young holding midfielders patrolling in front of the three centre backs. Mahtal wasn’t overly confident about the first season, he just wanted to achieve the board’s objective of a top-half season and get players bedded into a more suitable / less ridiculous formation.
Getting Started In Switzerland
The bookies certainly didn’t rate Mahtal’s decision to bin off the golden oldies. They predicted Zürich to finish 7th in the 12-team Super League with title odds of 33/1. Luzern are 5/4 favourites followed by holders Young Boys (9/4), Basel (11/2), who won 15 successive titles between 2026 and 2040, Grasshoppers (20/1) and St. Gallen (25/1).
Mahtal began life in Switzerland with a solid 2-1 with at home to Lausanne, with Maudonnet scoring inside 25 seconds before Walker’s first senior goal after the break. Maudonnet’s goal earned a point at Winterthur before Walker bagged a brace to defeat Bellinzona 2-0. But they crashed down to earth with a 3-0 defeat at Young Boys. They generally began the season pretty well, including Roos scoring one and making the other for Basic in a 2-0 win at St. Gallen and Mitic scoring a late winner to defeat Grasshoppers 1-0.
However, two hammerings by Young Boys, 4-0 and 5-1, forced Mahtal to give up on the 3-5-2 and switch to the 4-4-2 with makeshift fullbacks. That delivered an improvement as Doebel scored his first senior goal from right back after Maudonnet’s hat trick inspired a 3-2 win at Lausanne before the striker scored again and late goals by Roos and Liverpool loanee Martyn Foy nicked a 3-2 win at home to leaders Young Boys. And a decent run of form sent them into a month-long winter break sitting 3rd, 6 points behind Young Boys and Luzern.
Conference League
Zürich eased through a couple of qualifying rounds, including 17-year-old winger Bekim Oertli getting two assists in both legs against Crusaders, to reach the group stage. The group ridiculously began at home to Basel and Oertli and Corovic strikes earned a 2-1 win. Mitic nicked a point at CSKA-Sofia and scored again in a 3-1 win at Maccabi Haifa. They lost at Levski Sofia, but home wins over Derry and TNS saw Zürich just qualify automatically in 8th. The last 16 saw Zürich take on the only team to beat them in the group, Levski, and they again lost 1-0 in Bulgaria and played poorly at home to lose 2-0.
Massive Rebuild Continues
Mahtal continued to rebuild the Zürich squad by moving on underperforming players. He brought in around £15m for 8 players, including angering the fans by selling Maudonnet, who announced he’d leave at the end of his contract and was playing badly, to Rapid for £6m. That takes Mahtal’s total sales in six months to over £35m on 40 players and reduced the weekly wage spend to just £111k. But he kept his powder dry for now as he was still waiting for his scouting network to really kick in.
Mahtal reverted to a 4-3-3 shape with two holding midfielders, which looked promising in a 0-0 at home to Basel before losing 1-0 at Luzern. But the new approach worked nicely at Winterthur as an early Mitic strike was followed by Basic, now playing as a lone striker, and Foy goals before Basic and Roos inspired a 4-1 thumping of Bellinzona. But a few disappointing performances, including losing at bottom-side St. Gallen, saw Zürich drop behind the top two.
That meant a battle for the European places as 3rd to 9th were split by just 10 points with five games of the regular season remaining. But Fitas and Basic goals edged a 2-1 win over Grasshoppers to open things up, and they went into the end-of-season split 3 points clear of Basel and only 3 points behind Luzern in 2nd.
The Championship Group began with the easiest game, and Mitic and Basic’s second-half goals earned a 2-1 win over Winterthur. The two hardest games followed, and Oertli and Basic earned Mahtal’s first win over Young Boys before potentially throwing away a shot at 2nd by losing 2-0 at Luzern. However, Foy inspired a 3-1 win at Thun the day before Luzern lost 1-0 at Basel, which sent Zürich 2nd, a point clear of Luzern going into the final day. They entertained 4th-place Basel and a poor game was decided by Corovic’s 20-yard strike just before halftime.
That ensured a young Zürich side finished in an impressive 2nd place with 67 points after 19 wins, 19 draws and 9 defeats, scoring 50 and conceding 38. They finished 11 points behind champions Young Boys but got 8 points more than last season. Roos got a league-high 6 MOTM awards and the 3rd-most assists with 10, Basic was the 12th-top scorer with 9 in 34, and Schonfelder led the league with 16 clean sheets.
Youngsters Deliver At Zürich
Mahtal was impressed with the progress his young squad had made this season. He hadn’t been expecting a positive response to his massive firesales, but the youngsters kicked on through the final few months to secure a strong 2nd place finish. They were struggling a little for a goalscorer given Basic led the way with 11 goals, as well as 8 assists, in 43 games. Roos was probably their top performer with a club-high 15 assists and 8 goals, along with loanee Foy with 9 goals and 5 assists and Mitic with 8 goals and 8 assists. While the promising Corovic was making rapid progress and made it onto the NxGn 2052 list in 37th place.
Zürich’s impressive youth talents were boosted by another stellar intake that yielded six players with at least 4.5-star potential. The stars of the intake were winger Alphons Bachmann and midfielders Armande Tonz and Jan Imhof along with, bizarrely, four more promising wingers.
Mahtal now had a decent transfer kitty to work with as he looked to mold his promising youngsters. But could they take the fight to dominant force Young Boys in his second season in Switzerland? Join us on Monday to find out!
Football Manager Addict 
Leave a comment