Where Are They Now: FC Thun

In what I hope will become a reg­u­lar fea­ture, I am going to spot­light a club that had pre­vi­ously made an impact in the Cham­pi­ons League, UEFA Cup or one of the older com­pe­ti­tions like the Cup Win­ners Cup. I will give you some back­ground on the club and take a look at their recent fortunes.

With qual­i­fy­ing ongo­ing and some of Europe’s smaller clubs try­ing to make it to the big dance, I thought FC Thun would make an excel­lent can­di­date for this first install­ment. FC Thun were the ulti­mate under­dog story and the 2005–2006 sea­son will always stand­out in the club’s history.

Though they had been estab­lished as an ama­teur foot­ball club back in 1898, it was only nine years ear­lier that Thun was still play­ing third divi­sion foot­ball in front of crowds of, at most, a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple. After fin­ish­ing 2nd in the Swiss League in the 2004-05 sea­son, Thun entered the sec­ond round of qual­i­fy­ing for the 2005-06 Cham­pi­ons League season.

With a bud­get of around 2 mil­lion Euros, the lit­tle club from the Bernese high­lands pulled off a win against FC Dynamo Kyiv and then knocked Swedish club Malmö FF out in the third qual­i­fy­ing round. FC Thun then found them­selves drawn into a group with Euro­pean vet­er­ans Arse­nal, Ajax and Sparta Prague. Aston­ish­ingly, they man­aged to fin­ish 3rd ahead and were com­pet­i­tive in their matches with Arse­nal (A 1 goal dif­fer­ence in both matches) and Ajax(A score­less draw and a 4–2 loss). A win and a draw against Sparta Prague were enough to gain the club a UEFA Cup para­chute berth.

Par­tially because of their Euro­pean adven­ture, Thun’s league form suf­fered and a run of one vic­tory in ten league matches led to man­ager Urs Schönenberger’s fir­ing. This came just days before their UEFA Cup debut against Ham­burger SV in the Round of 32.

The fir­ing brought to a close a roller-coaster 13-month spell for Schö­nen­berger, who was named man­ager in Jan­u­ary of 2005. The club invested the wind­fall from their Euro­pean suc­cess into play­ing and coach­ing staff as well as infra­struc­ture but the results con­tin­ued to go against them.

With new man­ager Heinz Peis­chl, Thun fin­ished fifth in the league in 2005/06, and with Peis­chl unable to find the right for­mula, sev­enth last sea­son. He was sacked and unfor­tu­nately his Dutch replace­ment René van Eck could not halt the slump as Thun were rel­e­gated from the Swiss top flight in the 2007-08 season.

Thun hit rock bot­tom ear­lier in the year when police accused nine past and present Thun play­ers of hav­ing sex with an under-age girl. Club pres­i­dent Kurt Weder fell down a flight of stairs at his home and was forced to resign his post as he recov­ered from his injuries. Com­pound­ing their prob­lems, Thun were refused a play­ing licence by the Swiss FA on finan­cial grounds but the team was able to appeal and stay afloat.

Weder was replaced by 57-year-old Markus Stähli, who was the club pres­i­dent for seven years dur­ing the club’s ama­teur days, and the hope is that Thun can rebuild again from scratch. The club Stähli is in charge of have long since spent their Cham­pi­ons League wind­fall and their one­time plans to move to a new sta­dium (with some pub­lic fund­ing) in 2010 look ambi­tious but there is talk of pri­vate invest­ment so the project may yet occur. One can hope that Thun’s worst days are behind them as they begin the climb back into the Swiss Super League.

Hans Ruedi Bau­mann has replaced van Eck as coach after the club failed to impress in the Chal­lenge League (Swiss 2nd divi­sion) under van Eck’s guid­ance. Bau­mann, for­merly a striker for Thun, had pre­vi­ously coached Thun’s U18 and U21 teams before tak­ing charge of the senior side. They cur­rently sit 6th in the Chal­lenge League with 7 points from 4 matches played.

I was unable to find out more on Weder, the last reports I could find were that he was at a para­plegic cen­tre. If any­one has heard any­thing more recent, please send me a note and let me know how he’s doing.

Tagged as: fc thun, heinz peischl, kurt weder