Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2016 after barely surviving relegation the season before has forever gone into history as one of football's biggest fairytale stories. Most experts would probably agree that, with the intense competition, that accomplishment is unlikely to be recreated in Europe’s strongest league, but in Switzerland, they are on the brink of getting their own version of Leicester’s miracle through “das Fussball Wunder von Thun”.
Football is usually not the first thing that people think about when they arrive in Switzerland’s 11th biggest city, beautifully located at Lake Thun at the foot of the Swiss Alps, where most sports fans are mostly focused on the prestigious downhill race 'Lauberhornrennen' that takes place every January in Wengen, only 40 km away from Thun.
Football lovers from Thun have had to make the 30 km trip to Bern to watch prime football at Young Boys in season's gone by, the team that previously spearheaded Switzerland’s hopes in the European club competitions, but this season the Stockhorn Arena, with a capacity of 10.000 spectators have seen local supporters flooding the gates as FC Thun have completely caught Swiss football by surprise.
After spending five years in the second tier, the Challenge League, FC Thun who have been a bit of a yo-yo club since the turn of the century, are on the verge of winning their first major trophy in their 127-year history as Mauro Lustrinelli’s outfit have won nine successive matches to go 14 points clear at the top of the Swiss Super League with just 12 matches left to play.
One of the key players in the team, the 23-year old central midfielder Justin Roth, tells Flashscore that one of the secrets behind the success of this season has been the fact that the club has been able to preserve the same group of players for a long time. “While some of the other clubs have seen a lot of players come and go, we have been able to hold on to some of our key players and haven’t had a lot of changes in our squad over the summer."
"So we have been able to play with the same players for a long time, which means that people know each other and the tactical patterns really well. At the same time, we should not forget that we also brought in a couple of players over the summer (like striker Brighton Labeau from Guingamp and left back Michael Heule from Stade Lausanne/Ouchy) who have had a really positive impact on the team.”
Roth, who began the first five matches on the bench but has since developed into a regular starter, applauds the work ethic in the team and says FC Thun is basically a club without stars.
“It’s really a team in the true sense of the word. It’s not big money and big names. Nobody is extra special, but of course, if we make it to the Champions League, then you need to have players that stand out in your squad, and should we win the title, it will also make us appealing to many high-profile players. But at the moment, the squad really works well, and even when we have had injuries, the substitutes have done really well to replace them, especially during “English weeks” with three matches in seven days.”
Former Thun captain and Swiss international, coach Mauro Lustrinelli, is the mastermind behind the unexpected success. He scored 20 goals for Thun in 2004-05, driving them to second in the Super League, their biggest accomplishment yet, and was also a key member of the Thun side that earned a place in the 2005/06 Champions League, the first and only time they qualified for Europe’s elite competition.
Lustrinelli, who took the reins as manager in 2022/23, centred his tactics around fast attacking football last season but has adopted a slightly more conservative approach this season in a 4-2-2-2 formation, with the two central midfielders sitting deep to help dictate play.
With an average possession of 46.3%, Thun has no intentions of dominating; instead, they are very focused on turning defence into attack using very few passes in the process. Thun leads the statistics in terms of tackles won, and they have conceded the least amount of goals in the league (28 after 26 matches).
Their strong presence in the box is indicated by the fact that they have the highest amount of shots on target, and they have scored the highest amount of goals in the league (60 after 26 matches).
Roth hails the influence of Lustrinelli and says that the team is perfectly set up to execute his tactics. “Lustrinelli is certainly very important for the team. It means a lot for us to know that he has already had success with the club before and played in the Champions League, and it encourages the belief in the squad that we can accomplish big things.”
“In many of our matches, we have been able to take the lead, which means that we have been able to control games. And even though our opponents have had more possession, especially towards the end of the matches, their search for an equalizer has often created more room for us to work with, which we have exploited."
Roth says that fear of jinxing one of the most sensational accomplishments in European football over the last decade has kept the Thun squad from discussing the title despite the very comfortable lead at the top of the Swiss League:
"We don’t speak about the title as we don't want to jinx anything, but of course it’s impossible not to read about the fact in the media that we could win back-to-back titles (the Championship and the Superleague), which I believe has never happened in Switzerland before. Our region of the country is characterised by modesty, and we are not loud, so we prefer not to speak about it, but let our performances tell the story.
"At the club, we are only focused on the next match. Of course, we have a nice gap to our opponents, but strange things can happen in football, and we want to make sure we finish the job."
The question is now if Thun can bring the title home to emulate what Leicester and Kaiserslautern have accomplished in the Premier League and the Bundesliga before.
"I have read about the comparisons with Leicester, and I also thought it was unbelievable when they won the Premier League. I understand that people compare us to them because there are a lot of similar things. When they arrived at the winter break, people also said about Leicester that the success would come to an end, and the same thing happened for us.
"But like them, we have kept on pushing. People also spoke about them as a team without stars, but after the season, players like Kasper Schmeichel, Jamie Vardy, and Riyad Mahrez were recognised for their accomplishments and went on to have distinguished careers, and of course, that's also a dream of mine."