How Switzerland became a footballing nation

Thanks to numerous British influences, Switzerland became a footballing nation early on. Archiv BSC Young Boys

The Swiss Football Association was founded on April 7, 1895. But football actually became popular in Switzerland some time before that and can be attributed to the country’s strong international links in the 19th century.

People from Bern are very attached to their home city and proud of their famous dialect. It is therefore all the more strange that Bern’s football team has an English name: Young Boys (YB). And the motto “Young Boys forever” can be found in various places around the YB’s home ground, Wankdorf Stadium. Does this sound like a modern English marketing slogan? Not at all. From the very beginning, the motto was always an important part of Wankdorf Stadium.

The players personally immortalise the club motto at Bern’s newly completed Wankdorf Stadium, 1925. Archiv BSC Young Boys

Painting rather than passing: YB players at the Wankdorf Stadium, Bern, 1925. Archiv BSC Young Boys

Since then, it’s been all about the yellow and blacks for eternity. But in fact this is a (love) story that goes back to way before the stadium’s construction. To another century in fact. The slogan was invented by members when the club was set up in 1898 and is used by the Young Boys to this day. But why of all things an English club name and motto?

The statutes of YB, at the time still known as the Footballclub Young-Boys, from March 1898. Archiv BSC Young Boys

Football was introduced to Switzerland during the second half of the 19th century, predominantly by British schoolchildren, students, merchants and teachers. They brought the game with them from England – the birthplace of modern football – when they came to work or study in Switzerland, and encouraged the Swiss to play.

Conversely, some Swiss people – albeit a relatively much smaller number – discovered football during stays in Britain and helped make it popular when they returned home to Switzerland. One such example is Treytorrens de Loys. He studied engineering at King’s College London in the 1880s before starting his career in the Swiss Army. In 1913, he was promoted to major general and commanded the 2nd Division of the Swiss Army in the First World War. Treytorrens de Loys brought his love of football back to Switzerland and thanks to him, the sport gradually caught on in senior military circles.

Not only the name of the sport in Swiss German – “tschuute” or “tschutte”, “schuute” or “schutte” – comes from English (“to shoot”), but also terms such as penalty, corner or goalie are still common in Swiss football today. Also, the Swiss football pioneers didn’t use the German word ‘Fussball’ but football. Clubs sometimes had English names, like the Old Boys BaselExternal link and the Grasshoppers Club ZurichExternal link. The Swiss football governing body was called the Swiss Football AssociationExternal link (in English) when it was set up in 1895, and defenders were called backs.

We cannot say with any certainty where and when football was first played in Switzerland. The earliest evidence suggests the region around Lake Geneva from the 1860s. For example, press from that time features reports and announcements of matches in which Brits from Geneva and Lausanne met to play football. In addition, football was already being played at the schools Château de Lancy in 1853 and La Châtelaine in 1869, although the pupils were mainly the offspring of wealthy British families. The first football clubs were set up in the 1870s, and the Swiss were also in on the act. For example, Switzerland’s oldest existing football club, FC St. GallenExternal link, was set up in 1879 by merchants and former students of the Institut Wiget in Rorschach, who had discovered football through their English teacher while studying there.

Anglicisms galore: an article from the Schweizer Sportblatt, November 1898. Archiv BSC Young Boys

The strong presence of BritsExternal link and the economic ties with the United Kingdom in trade and tourism were key reasons why football was imported and caught on relatively early in Switzerland. Modern football – modern in the sense of a game with fixed and codified rules – spread in the British Isles between 1840 and 1860 (there is evidence of ‘wild’ folk football with no codified rules as early as the late Middle Ages). Compared with other countries in continental Europe, it is also interesting to note that the sport spread faster in countries that were more industrialised when football emerged. Besides Switzerland, this was particularly the case of Belgium and Denmark. The industrial age also gave rise to a young and aspirational social class who advocated free trade, cosmopolitanism and competition and saw these values reflected in football, with its universal rules and direct competition between two teams.

The FC St Gallen team, 1881. Wikimedia

The Château de Lancy football team, 1853. Wikimedia

Switzerland’s international ties also played a part in the further spread of football in continental Europe, with German, French and Italian football pioneers discovering the game at Swiss universities and grammar schools, and Swiss merchants and academics setting up football clubs in southern Europe. The best-known example is Hans ‘Joan’ Gamper from Winterthur who, with a group of like-minded individuals, set up FC Barcelona in 1899. Gym teachers from French-speaking Switzerland were also invited by the Bulgarian education minister to teach at various schools, where they got students into football.

>>Watch this Youtube video of the first football match filmed in Switzerland in 1897.

Football was also played at a number of state schools in Switzerland from the 1880s, and in 1898 found its way into the Eidgenössische Turnschule, which was a sort of core curriculum for gym and sports teaching. Apart from in the catholic conservative cantons, the educational institutions and curricula at the time were mainstream liberal, and football was a good fit as it shared the same ethos. But above all, the game was compatible with Swiss schools because in its original form at upper middle class, elite public schools in Britain, it had a profoundly educational (in the sense of morally instructive) aspiration in that it was about competition, following rules, and developing team spirit and a certain brand of masculinityExternal link.

Hans ‘Joan’ Gamper from Winterthur who, with a group of like-minded individuals, set up FC Barcelona in 1899. Wikimedia

It was designed to be character-building and to make boys into disciplined and healthy men. Accordingly the Eidgenössischen Turnschule of 1898 states: “A good footballer is characterised by fast, energetic, but completely selfless action that is geared only to the general interest of the game, which probably best illustrates the value of football as an educational method.” In German-speaking countries, the word Körpererziehung was used to describe this specific notion of education, in other words the idea of a healthy mind in a healthy body, and physical training influencing the mind and intellect of young people. Many of the pioneering football clubs were also guided by the idea of Körpererziehung, for example, the first statutes of the Grasshopper Club Zurich stated that one of the club’s goals was to “educate the body”, while Bern’s Young Boys talked about “strengthening the body”.

The Swiss national football team trains in the woods, 1960. Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum / ASL

For the first footballers, there appeared to be a more important factor at play that added to the game’s appeal, as Fritz Schäublin, member of FC BaselExternal link from 1893, wrote in his memoirs about the pioneering age: “At the time, we played football because we wanted to fulfil our desire for physical activity more freely than in a gymnastics club, and we hoped to find that satisfaction in football.” The reason Schäublin was so put off by gymnastics was because many gym exercises at the time (and until about the 1960s) were strongly reminiscent of a military drill. Besides front hip circles and handstands, they also involved synchronised marches and parades.

A brisk march at the Solothurn cantonal gymnastics festival in Olten, 1921 Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum

Although the gymnasts, like the footballers, were often from the middle classes and also promoted the ideal of Körpererziehung and were also gym teachers who got students to play football in schools, the powerful, conservative and nationalist gymnastics movement initially fought hard against the new sport. It claimed that football was a one-sided, dangerous and un-Swiss sport as it had been imported from a foreign country. It also said that footballers only trained for fun, rather than to prepare for civic dutiesExternal link, such as military service. But this did nothing to dampen the growing popularity of football –  it is still one of the most popular sports in the country, with 280,000 playing the beautiful game every weekend.

This text was produced in collaboration with Swiss Sports History, the portal for the history of sports in Switzerland. The portal focuses on education in schools and information for the media, researchers and the general public. Find out more at sportshistory.chExternal link