{"id":26984,"date":"2026-03-07T01:16:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T01:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/26984\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T01:16:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T01:16:16","slug":"like-leicester-and-bodo-glimt-swiss-soccer-club-thun-set-to-be-historic-league-champion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/26984\/","title":{"rendered":"Like Leicester and Bod\u00f8\/Glimt, Swiss soccer club Thun set to be historic league champion"},"content":{"rendered":"

GENEVA (AP) \u2014 Like Leicester\u2019s Premier League title<\/a> in 2016 and Bod\u00f8\/Glimt\u2019s stunning rise<\/a> in Norway since 2020, Swiss soccer looks set to get its own surprise champion.<\/p>\n

Thun has never won the top-tier league in the club’s 128-year history yet this season has turned the standings into a procession<\/a> \u2014 even as a newly promoted club.<\/p>\n

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A 2-2 draw with second-place St. Gallen late Thursday stopped Thun\u2019s run of 10 straight wins yet coach Mauro Lustrinelli\u2019s team is 14 points clear with 10 rounds left.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also a young team in the sense that the team is experiencing its first Super League,\u201d Lustrinelli told Swiss public broadcaster SRF after his players conceded a stoppage-time goal to drop points for the first time since December.<\/p>\n

Thun heads Sunday to local rival Young Boys, a 17-time title winner and Champions League regular in recent years, as the current best team in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Following Leicester\u2019s lead<\/p>\n

Thun is the latest unheralded European club taking inspiration from Leicester.<\/p>\n

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Last year, Union Saint-Gilloise won<\/a> its first Belgian title for 90 years and tiny Mj\u00e4llby was champion of Sweden<\/a> for the first time in its 86-year history.<\/p>\n

Title races across Europe see Hearts on course for a first Scottish title<\/a> in 66 years and Paris Saint-Germain being chased by Lens<\/a> which won its only French title 28 years ago.<\/p>\n

The most common link is clubs in provincial towns and cities run on low budgets with a collective team-first ethic.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really feel that it\u2019s like a family,\u201d Lustrinelli said last year when extending his contract at the club where he was once a star striker and has coached for four seasons.<\/p>\n

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Thun’s key players<\/p>\n

It took Thun five years to get out of the second division after being relegated in 2020. That period included severe financial issues and being part of a multi-club ownership group backed by American and Chinese investors.<\/p>\n

Thun is independent and locally owned again, and built a plan with Lustrinelli for a team playing the direct, pressing style he wants with two central strikers.<\/p>\n

Top scorer this season is 12-goal Elmin Rastoder, a Swiss-born North Macedonia international who could feature in the World Cup playoffs<\/a> against Denmark later this month.<\/p>\n

Rastoder\u2019s strike partner Thursday was Brighton Labeau, once a teammate of Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, who is three years younger, when they were both in the Monaco academy.<\/p>\n

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Thun’s star prospect is Ethan Meichtry, a Switzerland under-21 midfielder who could yet make the World Cup squad.<\/p>\n

Champions League debut<\/p>\n

Thun was one of the smallest clubs to play in the Champions League after Lustrinelli\u2019s 20-goal season lifted the team to Swiss league runner-up in 2005.<\/p>\n

Thun advanced through two qualifying rounds to reach the elite stage, finishing third in a group behind Arsenal and Ajax.<\/p>\n

Back then, Thun played European games at Young Boys\u2019 stadium in Bern because its old home was below UEFA standard.<\/p>\n

If Thun enters the Champions League in the second qualifying round in July, home games should be at its 10,000-seat Stockhorn Arena \u2014 with artificial turf, just like at Bod\u00f8\/Glimt inside the Arctic Circle in Norway.<\/p>\n

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The Swiss champion must win through three qualifying rounds to reach the 36-team league phase.<\/p>\n

Home of Swiss soccer<\/p>\n

Thun will soon be the home of Switzerland\u2019s soccer federation.<\/p>\n

The Swiss Football Home project was approved last August and will include a new headquarters for the federation plus training fields for national teams. Next door will likely be the next Swiss champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe road is still long,” Lustrinelli said of the 10-game run-in, “and we want everyone who will help us get those 30 points.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA (AP) \u2014 Like Leicester\u2019s Premier League title in 2016 and Bod\u00f8\/Glimt\u2019s stunning rise in Norway since 2020,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[3474,16499,12520,6424,16498,16496,16069,3798,16497,89,5685,41,16495,17,3257],"class_list":["post-26984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-arsenal","tag-brighton-labeau","tag-champions-league","tag-denmark","tag-kylian-mbappe","tag-mauro-lustrinelli","tag-monaco","tag-norway","tag-paris-saint-germain","tag-premier-league","tag-sweden","tag-swiss","tag-swiss-soccer","tag-switzerland","tag-thun"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116185253984709063","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}