It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. David Herold wants continental football; whether Servette can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Servette know it.
Nobody at Servette will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Squad27 Mar 2028
Words at Servette training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marwan Aubert is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Breel Embolo signs something — a contract at Servette or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Servette would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Servette this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Servette can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
11 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Philip Otele is on it.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Servette are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Servette know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Houboulang Mendes and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Words at Servette training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Breel Embolo is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Lausanne-Sport have kept their man, and Servette go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Servette told Houboulang Mendes something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Nobody at Servette will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.