Swiss national team: Growing diversity according to the Balkan generation

In the summer of 2004, the news magazine “Facts” presented the population group that would dominate the Swiss national team in the future under the title “Hopp Schwiic”: the secondos, especially those from the former Yugoslavia. “They are tricky, cunning and technically adept,” wrote the magazine. Even if the formulation is problematic from today’s perspective, the forecast was correct: children of Balkan refugees have been the defining figures of the Swiss national team over the last 15 years.

From the 1980s onwards, more and more players with migrant backgrounds found their way into the selection. In addition to those of Italian origin, the largest immigrant group, Kubilay Türkyilmaz and the Yakin brothers with Turkish origins enriched the team. At the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, diversity was Switzerland’s hallmark: it had the most players with a foreign background of any team.

Players like Valon Behrami, Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri dominate on the pitch and in the headlines. The national team has never been more successful than with them. Who will follow in their footsteps?

The Portuguese don’t want to turn their children into Ronaldos

As Director of Football Development at the Swiss Football Association, Patrick Bruggmann has an overview of the greatest football talents and knows who is coming. He says it is becoming apparent that the Nati is becoming more diverse, less dominated by one group. You can already see that today. The squad for the Nations League games against Serbia and Denmark includes Ulisses Garcia, born in Portugal to Cape Verdean parents and raised in Geneva. Or Joël Monteiro, of Portuguese descent, born in Sion; Eray Cömert, son of Turkish parents, grew up in Rheinfelden in Aargau; Ricardo Rodríguez, child of a Spaniard and a Chilean mother, grew up in Zurich.

If there is one group that outnumbers the others, it is the players with roots in Africa. Of the 23 players in the Nations League squad, 14 have a foreign background, 6 of them on the African continent. For Bruggmann, black Africans are a group with a “big impact,” as he says. Many of them are athletic and dynamic. Prerequisites that are in great demand in football, which is becoming increasingly faster and more physical. If there is an accumulation of a group of origin such as that of the players of Balkan origin, this is usually the consequence of armed conflicts, such as the Yugoslavia wars in the 1990s, which triggered a flow of refugees. Today, large groups of refugees from Eritrea, Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan continue to seek protection in Switzerland. But whether there will be an effect on football is also questionable because it is difficult to estimate how many of the refugees will one day have a Swiss passport.

However, citizenship is not the only exclusion criterion. What is also crucial is the importance the parents’ generation attaches to football and how they assess the social status of a kicker. The third largest group of foreigners in Switzerland are the Portuguese, with over a quarter of a million living here. But they are hardly represented in the national teams, even though Portugal has a great football tradition. Apparently the parents don’t see little Cristiano Ronaldos in their sons. “The families that come to Switzerland are often very interested in vocational training,” says Bruggmann. In addition, they often planned to return to Portugal as soon as they had received a good education.

The wave of Tamil immigration in the 1980s also had no impact on football. Although thousands came to Switzerland, none emerged as footballers. Something similar may apply to them: they did not seek social advancement through the FCZ, but rather through the Rämibühl high school.

But those are the exceptions. Fundamentally, football is still what it was for Italian boys in the 1970s: a vehicle for social advancement, especially for those whose chances in other areas are limited. Christian Koller, head of the social archive in Zurich, has dealt with football and immigration to Switzerland in various publications. He says: “The children from the working class still see a perspective in football and not those from the expats.” The prestige of a football career can also change within a group. The better a group’s access to education, the more clearly they see opportunities for advancement in another area, the more they turn away from football, says Koller.

This development can be observed in the offspring of the Italian Saisonnier children. Today they are everything: bankers, doctors, postmen – but hardly any footballers anymore. Koller predicts that something similar will happen to the following generations of people from the Balkans. A development that Bruggmann has already noticed: With the influence of a “Swiss” culture, this group is becoming smaller.

The relationship with the migrant sons has remained vulnerable to crises

In general: What about those Swiss people who do not have a migration background, the successors of Remo Freuler, Michel Aebischer, Silvan Widmer, Nico Elvedi? They are sparsely represented in the youth squads. This group, says Bruggmann, is growing up with a plan B. If Plan A, the path to professional football, fails, people will change course more quickly. Especially since for many parents the dream of becoming a footballer is about as attractive as the dream of becoming an actor.

Bruggmann would like to see Plan A carried out a little longer in a “certain phase of the athlete’s journey”; the Swiss education system offers many opportunities for re-entry – a challenging concept for a country in which security thinking is deeply rooted. He regrets the departures because we cultivated a culture that enabled us to succeed in competitive sports. “We are not complacent, we strive for perfection, we are persistent and can push through,” he says.

Characteristics that are helpful in top-class sport. Coupled with what Bruggmann calls “confidence in their own abilities,” which tended to characterize players with a Balkan background, Switzerland managed to push boundaries. Qualifying for a quarter-final like this summer at the European Championships was unthinkable 30 years ago. Back then, people celebrated qualifying for a major tournament as if they had won a trophy.

Despite the successes, the Swiss public’s relationship with the players who have roots in the Balkans has remained vulnerable to crises. When Valon Behrami showed up in 2005 – dyed blonde hair, tattoos, big headphones, disturbingly cool – there was still mutual alienation. But the irritation continued and culminated in the discussion in 2018 about the double-headed eagle gesture by Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri (and the solidarity captain Stephan Lichtsteiner) in the World Cup game against Serbia. Ultimately, it was and is always about the question of whether the players are Swiss enough. While they have the feeling that they have long since provided proof with their decision and commitment to the country, they insist on better adaptation, especially when things are going badly in terms of sport.

The fragility of the relationship was accentuated among the players from the former Yugoslavia, but it was also evident among representatives of other nations. The integration of Blaise Nkufo, one of the first dark-skinned Swiss in the national team, was also accompanied by discord. In August 2002, he left the camp five hours before kick-off of a friendly against Austria. Nkufo felt treated unfairly, especially by national coach Köbi Kuhn. “I had the impression at the time that a colored player had to prove more than another,” he said later. In 2020 he said in an interview with Blue: “Sometimes you have to accept a setback so that others can be successful. Today there are some players of African descent in the national team. Maybe I could use my experiences to help the next generation.”

50 years ago, an Italian family in the canton of Aargau was sitting on packed suitcases. She waited for the referendum on the Schwarzenbach Initiative, which demanded that the proportion of foreigners in Switzerland should be a maximum of ten percent. The initiative was rejected, and a few years later the boy of the family was called up to the national team. The only stupid thing was that he didn’t have a Swiss passport. But it was quickly organized, and in 1978 Raimondo Ponte made his debut in the national team. Did he experience rejection? “I may have heard ‘Tschingg’ once more,” says Ponte today.

The Nati became the image of the country. And the country will continue to rub against it in the future.

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