Why is YB so far behind FCZ in the Super League

After the last YB game last Tuesday evening, 0-1 against Servette, nothing really matters anymore, which was repeatedly asserted before the winter break, during the winter break and afterwards: that things will get better with the Young Boys.

Coach David Wagner said in December that he was looking forward to the second half of the season, “where we hope to attack with a full band”.

And the player Sandro Lauper said before the start of the second half of the season, eight points behind FC Zurich: “We still have two direct encounters, then there are still two points behind.” As if it were a matter of course that YB defeated FCZ twice and progressed unstoppably through the league anyway.

And now the Bernese have played six games, three wins, two draws, one defeat – and the gap has grown to 13 points. What’s up with YB?

The pattern of point losses

“It’s the case that we’re lagging behind our own claims,” ​​says sports director Christoph Spycher. “We don’t deliver the services that we expect from ourselves.” It’s not about sporting drama having to be conjured up when YB is no longer at the top after four championship titles in a row. But the question is what are the reasons for this. And how intensively the people of Bern are investigating these causes.

In autumn 2021 there were the obvious reasons: the multiple burden of championship, cup and Champions League games, bad luck with injuries, avoidable sending off and controversial referee decisions against YB. But of these explanations, only the matter of the injured remained.

There was something irritating when Wagner said before the second half of the season that YB had scored too few points “because we scored too few goals and got too many”. It sounded all too banal, and the irritation continues. Away at St. Gallen and GC, the Bernese gave up the win late on; against Servette, however, they conceded the decisive goal in the third minute and did not find an answer for a game. The pattern of how YB loses points has changed – it cannot be attributed to bad luck or disadvantage.

The problem must go deeper, and it is natural to ask what role the Kapellmeister plays. Under the new coach Wagner, YB reached the Champions League, which brought in a lot of money. Wagner had a team at his disposal that had changed little over the summer; it was reminiscent of the constellation in 2018, when Gerardo Seoane took over an insignificantly changed championship team and led it into the premier class.

Seoane asked how much he was just protecting the legacy of his predecessor Adi Hütter. But in Seoane’s first season, YB had 65 points after 24 rounds, 22 more than today. With Wagner, the team does not achieve consistency. In autumn it still seemed that good games were not getting enough; meanwhile, the impression that Wagner gets too little out of good players has been strengthened.

It is Wagner’s fate that it is easy to doubt him at first, because not much else has changed – until this winter, when YB gave up four proven players, Silvan Hefti, Michel Aebischer, Jean-Pierre Nsame, Christopher Martins. It was a bold transfer strategy, and when asked critically, Spycher said it was not about giving up in the championship race, but rather about trust in the existing players.

And he continues to say that every transfer has its reasons, he defends the procedure because the transfer phase was surprising for him too – “I never thought that I would receive four requests from the same league for Jean-Pierre Nsame”. Ultimately, the Bernese agreed to a loan move to Venice because they had repeatedly denied the deserving striker a transfer.

“Very big disappointment”

Everyone is now challenged, says Spycher, and what sounds obvious gets something remarkable. He adds: “It is always a combination of many factors. Ultimately, a unity at different levels has to walk together in the same direction – and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t work.” And that’s not the case at the moment? “No,” says Spycher.

No, it doesn’t have to be that a club becomes champion again and again, this awareness should be particularly strong in Bern, after 32 years without a championship title until 2018. But Spycher would see a failure in 2022 as a “very big disappointment”. The Bernese knew that one day they would no longer be champions, but: “That’s the realistic view. There is also the perfectionist view. And in this perspective there is no room for the thought that we won’t make it this year.”

The decisive factor is what the Bernese will do with the findings of this season in the summer. Or even before. Will YB end the season with coach Wagner? Spycher says: «That is not our focus. Our focus is on getting our performance back.” And: “Football is a day-to-day business in which things can go extremely quickly, in all directions.”

They are words from the jargon that Spycher has hardly ever heard because since he took office in 2016, a YB trainer has never been criticized. The words suggest that the Bernese are investigating the causes very intensively.

From this point of view, the next few weeks will offer excitement, even without excitement in the title race. In a central area, however, the Bernese created clarity on Friday: The long-standing YB co-owner Hans-Ueli Rihs takes over the shares (53 percent) of the descendants of his brother Andy, who died in 2018, and becomes the sole YB owner. Hans-Ueli’s son Stefan has also been a member of the board of directors since 2019, and according to insiders, the father’s commitment can be transferred 1:1 to the son. It’s supposed to be a sign that the YB apparatus, by and large, doesn’t want to be upset, no matter how great the disappointment after this season will be.