Marked for Marco Burch
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market18 Jan 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Yverdon is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad18 Jan 2027
A falling-out at Yverdon
Fabio Saiz and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Market18 Jan 2027
Sion pay $360.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Yverdon training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bura 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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Yverdon are still strangers to each other
7 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.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
A loan move for Georgi Rusev is in the works
Yverdon have made the call to Sion. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Squad18 Jan 2027
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Yverdon are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
The manager makes an example of Lorenzo Villa
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market18 Jan 2027
A season-long look at somebody else’s player: Marco Burch arrives from Servette with something to prove and a return ticket in the drawer. Good loans make everybody richer; this one starts Saturday.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match6 Jan 2027
The cup run ends for Servette
0‑2 against St. Gallen, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
$8.8M on the table at Basel. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market11 Jan 2027
Gaël Ondoua 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 Servette can pretend not to have heard.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Words exchanged at Servette
Mika Baur and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad11 Jan 2027
“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.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Atalanta have kept their man, and Servette go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market11 Jan 2027
The name of Marco Burch has come up in conversations Servette were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Everybody at Servette saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 36 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match11 Jan 2027
Every point is an argument now for Yverdon
Position 9 and 13 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Sion keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Market11 Jan 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Yverdon can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom11 Jan 2027
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Mohamed Tijani has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Fabio Saiz in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Yverdon this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Ahmedin Avdić is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
“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 Yverdon know it.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad11 Jan 2027
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 35 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match23 Nov 2026
Servette up to position 3
21 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Squad23 Nov 2026
A falling-out at Servette
Houboulang Mendes and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match21 Nov 2026
It finished 1‑0, and it was Marius Wolf’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Servette.
Squad23 Nov 2026
A row about effort at Servette
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rico Preißinger was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Marius Wolf was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.20. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Djibril Steffen on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Somebody watched every match in the division at the weekend and decided he was the best thing in any of them. A small honour, and most careers end without one.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.