The picture that presents itself to the onlooker on this early Thursday evening at the Moos sports facility in Wettswil is symbolic of the village club in Säuliamt: A good 26 hours before the second cup duel of FC Wettswil-Bonstetten against FC Winterthur and a good year after the painful 0:2 defeat in the first duel due to goals conceded in the 87th and 90th minutes, there is a lot of activity.
Martin Meili, the president, is giving information to media representatives in the forecourt of the restaurant. In the background, his son Patrick rolls past with a forklift truck, his wife Petra is helping out due to a staff shortage in the service department. A little further back, a group is working on a steel scaffold. In good spirits, the young men are building the provisional grandstand for Friday evening’s cup match. Players from the first team are also already there more than an hour before the start of the final training session.
Yes, the upcoming cup highlight requires efforts from many players in the club. And yes, the amateur club, in which the communities of Stallikon, Wettswil and Bonstetten work together, is very much a family-run one. “We are extremely well anchored regionally,” says Martin Meili, and rightly so. All of the juniors come from the three communities mentioned, and the catchment area of the players is limited to the Zurich area.
Regional flagship club
This season, the club is playing in the 1st League Classic, the fourth highest Swiss league, for the 13th time in a row. For the seventh time since 2010, the team has fought its way into the main round and into a cup duel with a Super League team. The highlight was the advance to the round of 16 in 2015, when Wettswil-Bonstetten was only stopped by FC Thun (1:2).
“We are very solidly positioned,” says Flavio Peter. As captain of the first team, the former U18 junior of FC Luzern sets the pace in central midfield and was also the team’s top scorer last season with 16 goals. Peter has played exclusively for FCWB for ten years now.
The money for the club’s stability at a high amateur level does not come from cup games against big clubs – the costs for security and the construction and dismantling of infrastructure are too high for that – and it also does not come from a megalomaniac patron. A close-knit, broad core in the club and loyal sponsors from the region ensure that FCWB has a solid foundation. “We do not get involved in financial adventures,” Meili emphasises.
In addition, although the players are amateurs, they pursue their hobby with great ambition during the three to four high-quality training sessions per week. “We are ambitious players who sacrifice a lot for football. And we have a great bond and are good friends with each other,” says Peter. “With us, the players don’t disappear in all directions after the final whistle.”
Lichtsteiner as an “absolute stroke of luck”
And now there is Stephan Lichtsteiner on the sidelines. Lichtsteiner, 108-times a Swiss international and captain of the national team for many years, a fixture at the then Italian serial champions Juventus Turin and later at Arsenal in the English Premier League. “He is an absolute stroke of luck for us. His meticulousness and attention to detail is impressive,” says Meili about the ex-professional, who fortunately for FCWB lives in the area and initially joined the club’s senior team as a player.
The 40-year-old Lichtsteiner has been the coach of the first team at FC Wettswil-Bonstetten since July. With a 2-0 win against Linth 04 and a 0-0 draw against Winterthur’s U21, the season started successfully with the prominent coach on the sidelines. “That’s untypical for us. We don’t usually start the season well,” says Peter.
When asked about the coach, the captain starts to rave: “It’s unique to have such a famous footballer on the sidelines. When someone like that speaks to you, you naturally listen very carefully. It’s sometimes almost a little difficult for a non-professional to understand everything he wants to convey to us in such a short space of time. But we’re taking it step by step, and so far it’s looking good.”
Find solutions, don’t stonewall
After a year as assistant coach of the Swiss U18 national team and two years as U15 and U16 coach of the FC Basel juniors, Lichtsteiner himself sees the job at Wettswil-Bonstetten as “a good next step from the juniors to the men’s team.” He is aware that he is dealing with amateurs at FCWB and that there is less time for training than he was used to as a professional.
Lichtsteiner uses “passion, training, fun and variety” as keywords for his approach. His training includes many playful elements. He wants to show the players how to find solutions, he says.
So far, things have worked out well with Lichtsteiner and FC Wettswil-Bonstetten. Will the coach with the big name help the club to pull off its first coup over a Super League team at the seventh attempt? One thing is clear for Lichtsteiner: “We want to make a good impression. We’re certainly not going to sit back for 90 minutes and hope for a lucky punch. That’s important to me.”
