Marked for Erling Odegaard
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Jul 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Zurich will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad30 Jul 2040
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad30 Jul 2040
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zurich this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Jul 2040
Erling Odegaard is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Player ratings30 Jul 2040
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.59 on the card, and the Zurich support went home talking about one name.
Match28 Jul 2040
Zurich and Basel take a point apiece
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings30 Jul 2040
Successful dribbles: 10. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings30 Jul 2040
Off the bench and decisive: Fabian Schär
The substitution nobody applauded turned out to be the whole story. Zurich were going nowhere until he came on.
Market30 Jul 2040
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Jul 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Zurich will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad2 Jul 2040
Tempers go at Zurich
Livano Comenencia was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad2 Jul 2040
Erling Odegaard is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad13 Feb 2040
Nevio Di Giusto damages knee ligaments — 76 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 76 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
The terraces13 Feb 2040
Anger at Zurich spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Market13 Feb 2040
Simon Steffen hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Zurich can pretend not to have heard.
Squad13 Feb 2040
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zurich this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Feb 2040
Zoran Alilović gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Zoran Alilović has just signed for Zurich, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad13 Feb 2040
Words at Zurich training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Livano Comenencia 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Jan 2040
Nevio Di Giusto damages knee ligaments — 97 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 97 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market23 Jan 2040
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad23 Jan 2040
Tempers go at Zurich
Nevio Di Giusto was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad23 Jan 2040
Words at Zurich training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan-José Perea 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.
Boardroom23 Jan 2040
90% of the income goes out in wages at Zurich
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Squad23 Jan 2040
Umeh Emmanuel has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Zurich 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.