The Grasshoppers are bottom of the table and need reinforcements. But for the new sports director Stephan Schwarz, the top priority is more stability – and not big names.
Mr. Schwarz, what was your first thought when your friend Harald Gärtner asked you at the end of March whether you wanted to become the new sports director at GC?
Wait a minute. Harald Gärtner and I are not friends with a personal connection. We know each other from the time when we were competitors: he as managing director in Ingolstadt, me in Augsburg. We enjoyed exchanging ideas and over the years we have repeatedly found that we share a similar view of football. This also includes how to lead and advance a club.
And how do you move a club like GC forward?
The short answer is: by bringing stability to the club in all areas and laying a solid foundation.
How boring. GC must be happy to reach 10th place with this team.
Boring or not, we have to start from what we have. We survived the play-offs and just managed to avoid relegation. That is the starting point. We want to be better than last season and avoid the play-offs.
Backpack from the Bundesliga
Stephan Schwarz, GC Sports Director
The 53-year-old has succeeded Bernt Haas as sporting director since the end of March following the takeover by Los Angeles FC. The Stuttgart native has worked in several Bundesliga clubs as a youth coach, scout, assistant and in other areas. Schwarz was most recently sporting director at 1. FC Augsburg until 2019.
Before we go into this in more detail – what actually motivated you to accept the job as sports director at GC?
It was clear to me that the Grasshoppers once again had serious owners in Los Angeles FC. In discussions with Harald Gärtner and those responsible at LAFC, I got the impression that the conditions were in place to put GC on the right path. I also knew GC from before through my various activities.
After the end of your time in Augsburg in April 2019, you were not employed by any club for several years. What have you been doing in the meantime?
I had to take care of private matters in my family. Then Corona came and things weren’t going well. After that, I got back to football, supported various clubs, did mentoring, continued my education, and maintained my contacts. I traveled a lot, including in Latin America and the USA.
Were you also a player agent?
No. I was never interested in that side of the business. I always worked from the perspective of the clubs. I was lucky that I was able to grow into all areas of a club: youth, contracts, assistance, management, scouting. So over the years at VfB Stuttgart, 1860 Munich, TSG Hoffenheim and FC Augsburg I acquired the knowledge that a sports director needs.
What do you think is the biggest project at GC right now?
The first team. It is the most important thing, as in every club. There are legal cases that have been left pending, the cooperation between the club and the association had to be reactivated. There was and is a lot more. But the most important thing is the first team. But we also have to look after the young talent.
The squad is a patchwork. You have to despair when you see how the team has been put together.
What would despair achieve? There are contracts. We want to be judged by the fact that we build a stable structure in the long term. I’m sorry, that’s the situation. At GC, many dreams have been sold over the last twenty years. We don’t sell dreams. We are realistic and take one step at a time, consistently and patiently.
Sky Sun, the GC president under the Chinese owners, had other ideas. In 2021, he told the NZZ that the Grasshoppers should win titles after five years and be among the European elite after ten years. They proclaim the opposite: humility, realism, modesty. Does that suit GC?
We want to win games, no question about it. But to progress we need stability first, otherwise the structure will quickly collapse again. We can no longer influence what happened or was said in the past. Everyone can see that the club has not developed well in the last ten or fifteen years. We can do better now, even if our statements about our ideas and plans may sound boring.
We’ll try something different: GC needs reinforcements in the offensive. Agreed?
We also know that we are not scoring enough goals. But there is no guarantee of scoring goals unless you bring in a striker like Robert Lewandowski. Here too: We are working on it and the new players have to fit into the structure. We will definitely make more transfers, the budget is there.
Does LAFC actually want to invest and spend money? So far, that is not the impression.
Our approach is not to finance a bubble with a lot of money, as Hertha Berlin did: That doesn’t work. LAFC is paying off debts and covering the deficit of supposedly 14 or 15 million francs. But it is also investing in our plan to progress step by step with players who will help us progress. We need three to five transfer periods, i.e. two to three years, before we can talk about higher goals. It’s not about names, it’s about the game idea and about carefully evaluating what we still need to implement our vision.
Doesn’t GC also need a statement transfer like Renato Steffen was as a key player for FC Lugano? For example, someone like Steven Zuber?
That’s a nice thought. But Zuber is a player who likes his club in Greece. We go our own way, you can’t transfer philosophies or approaches from one club to another. At the current stage we only want and need to look at our team.
There is also a collaboration with FC Bayern Munich. Why doesn’t one or two Bayern talents join GC?
This cooperation concerns LAFC and Bayern. But of course it is part of the network. We are in constant communication. At the moment we mainly need players who make few crucial mistakes and give us stability. Like our new players Benno Schmitz and Saulo Decarli. It’s about the good mix in the age structure of the entire squad.
Maybe. Think of a player like Kim Källström? The Swede immediately made the team and his teammates better in 2015.
But this example has certainly also changed the financial situation. Again: it’s about serious squad planning. We can’t just spend a lot of money on a player and think that will make things better. Football doesn’t work like that. We want to recognise the potential of players, develop them and bring them forward. It’s a puzzle. At Augsburg, for example, we brought in some players from a lower league. They gave the team stability and we developed them further. This approach must be our aim and our goal. Not the other way around.