Hakan Yakin Or Manuel Akanji at 2023 Champions League winners Manchester City in the English Premier League. Football in Switzerland has been booming in recent years. Junior teams at many amateur clubs now have waiting lists to join. Pitches around the country are booked out most weekends during the football season – shared by young and old with family backgrounds from near and far. The numbers are impressive on the face of it. Around 300,000 footballers representing 179 different nationalities were registered with the Swiss Football Association (SFA) in August 2022. Some 34 per cent had foreign passports, a proportion of whom were dual citizens. At around the same time, the SFA published the results of a comprehensive study on social integration in Swiss football clubs. Despite the tangible progress that had been made, the study also found that discrimination within football clubs was “much more common” against members from immigrant backgrounds than against those from liked his football. But this is not actually what happened. Ogi, on behalf of the Federal Council, was merely quoted as saying that citizenship applications could be “accelerated” in “exceptional circumstances”, primarily if there was “significant public interest” in doing so. But no efforts were made to expedite the naturalisation process in Yakin’s case. Swiss football’s role as a vehicle for integration is exaggerated at times. Türkyilmaz played for Switzerland but experienced racist verbal abuse. He retired briefly from international duty, although his teammates probably could not have cared less about his Turkish heritage. “Essentially, everyone has the same goal. It makes no difference whether your parents come from Switzerland or not,” Hakan Yakin told the “NZZ am Sonntag” in 2016 after being asked whether things like that were an issue inside the dressing room. “You just focus on the next game when you are with the national team,” he replied. “Or do you get the impression that the players want to sit around a table and talk about it?” Yann Sommer Manuel Akanji Kubilay Türkyilmaz Stephan Lichtsteiner Players like Minelli, Türkyilmaz and Xhaka remind us how much the identity of the national football team is intertwined with real life. War and politics trigger immigration – and Swiss football has been the beneficiary. Immigration from Eastern Europe, as a consequence of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, has had the most recent lasting impact on the fortunes of the national team. Nowadays, Switzerland regularly qualifies for the World Cup and the Euros. Yakin’s men will also be at this year’s Euro 2024 in Germany, which starts in mid-June. Euro 2012 is the only major tournament that they have missed in the last 20 years. And unlike Spain, Germany, England, Portugal, Belgium and Croatia, the Swiss have survived the group stage at every finals since 2014: the 2014, 2018 and 2022 World Cups; and Euros 2016 and 2020. Our footballers can more than hold their own in elite company. Take Granit Xhaka, who plays at Bayer Leverkusen, a top team in the German Bundesliga. Or Yann Sommer at Italian Serie A giants Internazionale. Swiss Review / May 2024 / No.3 15
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