Thun\u2019s unlikely story is reminiscent of Leicester City\u2019s 2016 league title in England and, here in Switzerland, 1. FC Kaiserslautern\u2019s 1998 triumph; the Red Devils also pulled off the coup as a newly promoted side. In Switzerland, a club has actually marched straight from the second tier to the title before. In 1952, it was Grasshoppers, though they were far less dominant than Thun are now, with just a single-point lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thun has not won a single title in the club\u2019s history to date. They have lost two cup finals. Their best league finish came in 2005 with second place, after which the team, led by striker Mauro Lustrinelli and midfield dynamo Andreas Gerber, sensationally qualified for the Champions League. The two protagonists from back then are also playing leading roles in the current fairy tale: Lustrinelli as manager, Gerber as president and sporting director.<\/p>\n
In the difficult search for reasons behind this seemingly inexplicable run of success, one ends up with local loyalty and continuity. Gerber has been part of Thun\u2019s management since retiring in 2009, whilst Lustrinelli has been coaching the first team since 2022. There are no internationally renowned stars in the squad, but there is at least one familiar name: Marco B\u00fcrki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thun\u2019s unlikely story is reminiscent of Leicester City\u2019s 2016 league title in England and, here in Switzerland, 1.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9315,20545,17,3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-35714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-features","9":"tag-super-league","10":"tag-switzerland","11":"tag-thun"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116261644034136894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35714","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=35714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}