A Swiss dichotomy played out on football pitches

Among the Swiss fans inside Stamford Bridge. Mark Henley / Panos Pictures

Last Thursday Swiss football club Servette FC played on one of the biggest stages in football – against Chelsea at their Stamford Bridge ground in the heart of London.

Four days earlier, while Chelsea were playing at home against Manchester City, Geneva side Servette FC spent a rainy Sunday afternoon in the opening round of the Swiss Cup at local fifth-tier club Signal-Bernex FC. The 1,500-capacity ground is on the edge of a village, surrounded by vineyards and the occasional cow.

The contrast couldn’t have been greater, but it feels familiarly Swiss, a crystallisation of a certain aspect of national identity. Distinctly local roots, a certain whiff of the country air with mud on modest boots, which then get dusted off and polished, ready to perform on a global stage. Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, just a few days before Chelsea come to Geneva to play the return match tonight, the Swiss foreign minister hosted the UN Security Council in Geneva, all flying in from New York for an event just down the road from Servette’s training ground.

Not always fun and games

Servette, who play in Switzerland’s top division, the Swiss Super League, must have seemed a massive challenge to Signal-Bernex. The final score, 7-1, reflected that.

The one-sided match between Servette and Signal-Bernex four days earlier. Mark Henley / Panos Pictures

The biggest cheer of the day, however, went to the home side’s solitary goal, putting one past the same goalkeeper who would face Chelsea’s stars a few days later. For the fans, it wasn’t the best of matches, and considering the opposition, the goals seemed to take a long time coming.

The rain didn’t help, pouring down on the away end, which had no stand let alone any cover. As one fan put it, “it’s not always great, but it’s what you do – you follow your team, whether it’s going to this match or the big one coming against Chelsea. It’s also the particular beauty of Swiss football: being able to go from a scruffy ground like this to a mythic stadium in a few days”.

The local match did have some advantages, apart from the score-line and the travel time: supporters were able to light flares, shrouding the opening minutes of the game in smoke, crowd the edge of the pitch up close to the players, and of course drink while watching the game.

Fast-forward four days, and the contrast was sinking in for many of the fans. Servette had not played an English side for 50 years, and in even then they lost 6-2 overall to Derby County, which is not quite the same thing as facing Chelsea, whose chants include “We’ve won it all” – and that includes the ultimate prize of the Champions League twice, most recently only three years ago. They had only lost twice in their past 15 European games, and both times to Real Madrid.

Their present squad is worth just over CHF1 billion ($1.18 billion). Servette’s team weighs in at just under CHF25 million. It’s true that Chelsea have problems, and a new coach, but the English press was unambiguous about the Swiss opposition, lingering on a recent 6-0 defeat at home at the Stade de Geneve. The game was decided before it started, and only CHF500 million worth of players featured in the starting line-up.

The crowds are thinner at Signal-Bernex. Mark Henley / Panos Pictures

At a gathering outside a pub on Earl’s Court Road on what was proving to be another rainy day, a Servette supporter summed things up: “It’s an enormous privilege to come and watch our team play here, coming as we do from Geneva. If we’re knocked out, it doesn’t matter, we’ll play in Europe again. It’ll come around maybe next year, but this, here in London, is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, not to be missed”.

You could feel it as they got ready to form a procession to the stadium, under the watchful eye of the London police – many of them avowed Chelsea supporters. As one put it, “it kind of goes with the territory, and we get to watch the match. We’re keeping an eye out for pyrotechnics as we know it’s part of the culture”.

It makes one wonder whether any of these police officers had been among the sodden crowd at the Stade Municipal de Bernex on Sunday, or whether there had been scouts from Chelsea checking out their opposition, and no doubt wondering what they were doing in the middle of nowhere in the rain.

Certainly from the perspective of the home side, echoing the British tabloid press, the result of the match was a foregone conclusion, and among Servette fans, different potential scores were bandied about, from a reverse score of Sunday’s 7-1 victory, to the reflection that “we’re not expected to win, we’re not under pressure, so we’re free in a way they aren’t”.

While processions have been formed elsewhere in other cities, this felt different – this was London, a city with a population the size of the whole of Switzerland – and they were on their way to Chelsea, THE Chelsea. And despite the Swiss fans’ modest belief in victory, the mood shifted, starting the moment the drums kicked off.  “Allez Servette allez, nous serons toujours là, nous chanterons pour toi, Allez Servette allez’ … Nous sommes les servettians, et nous allons gagner ….” Come on Servette come on, we’ll always be there, we’ll always sing for you, come on Servette … We’re from Servette, and we’re going to win.

The stadium is hidden by buildings from the arrival point for visiting fans, hemmed in by solid walls of stewards – and police, some on horseback. A little tension, some waiting, an arrest or two, not quite the riot that The Sun newspaper described. Then suddenly, the fans were in, and the first sight of the pitch, bringing audible gasps from the visitors. Stamford Bridge is a cathedral to the game, with a verticality that is spectacular, the view clear and close from every position, and soon to be filled with 37,900 fans, not far short of capacity.

No flags allowed in the crowd, no flares or pyrotechnics, not even beer in sight of the pitch, but plenty of stewards, and police down by the bar. Things are a bit different from home, and reality kicks in, but pride too, and the 700 fans were going to make some noise, to shout large in the big city: we may be going to lose, but they’re going to hear us support our team to the end.

By half time, with the score at 0-0, the 37,000 home supporters were near silent, apart from a few boos of disapproval, while the Servette supporters’ chants echoed round the ground. It wasn’t to last, of course, the unreal situation broken by a penalty early in the second half, followed by the entry of some more eye-wateringly expensive star players. A second goal sealed the score at 2-0 to the favourites.

The Geneva side still had chances, and almost scored, not once, but twice or a third time, even in the final seconds. In the end it didn’t happen, history didn’t quite get made, but the match had been much closer than anyone had imagined. Honour was done, pride was high and “Thank you Servette” was chanted with disarming sincerity.

But heads were still shaking at missed chances as the fans headed off into the night, still singing, drawing the curious stares of affluent local residents, and the somewhat half-hearted heckles of Chelsea fans, who secretly knew how different things might have turned out.

“She’ll let me try her hat on by the time we reach the station,” laughed one fan of one of the policewomen he’d been trying to flirt with – still channelling the exuberance of an evening that felt more like victory than the actual one only four days before in the Geneva countryside.

Perspectives shift, but as Servette’s captain said after the match, “I have the impression that we adapt according to our adversaries’ as a form of both celebration of the evening and a criticism”. A very Swiss conclusion.

Edited Marc Leutenegger.

All photos were taken with a mobile phone, for security reasons no SLR camera was allowed in the fan block.