Hehe, thank you for opening an English channel...
Well, let me tell you every thing I know about my club... and lets begin with the historic...
FC St. Gallen has been etablished on 19. April 1879. So we're the oldest existing football club outside the UK ... (There are older clubs like 1860 Munich, but they started with other sports first. for example swimming, etc)...
The club wasnt very succesfull during all the years so we only won two championships (1904, 2000), once the cup (1969) and once the league cup (1978)... The fans of the club are called "Espen" because of the name of the stadium Espenmoos. The club played there for 98 years, from 1910 to 2008! In Juny our new stadium, the commercial AFG Arena, has opened its gates. It has a capacity of 20'000 and is as modern as Alvalade...
The biggest year in the history of FC St. Gallen were the years from 1999-2001, when the team was sensational swiss champion in front of other clubs liker Grasshoppers or Basel. Marcel Koller (hes now coach of the german Bundesliga club Vfl Bochum) formed a new team with unknown players and focussed them on things like teamspirit, etc... so it was a very suprising year and nobody had bet on St. Gallen. The team could commit in the Champions League qualification, where they played against Galatsaray... Well, the failed... after a 1:2 at home, we played a 2:2 draw in turkey... Then the biggest highlight ever came: In the first round of Uefa Cup we've kicked Chelsea London out of the tournament. We lost at Stamford Bridge with 1:0 but we turned score at home (St. Gallen had to play its international games in Zurich beacause of the old Espenmoos) an won 2:0 against stars like Panucci, Zola, Di Matteo... The out in the Uefa cup came in the 2nd round, when we failed in the last minute against Brügge from Belgium...
2001 we were third in the swiss championship (we had the chance to defend the title until the last day in the league) and played international against Pelister Bitola, Steaua Bukarest and failed against the german club SC Freiburg... was a hard game... we won first in Freiburg with 1:0 and lost at home with 1:4...
In 2002 the team appeared in UI-Cup... after eliminating the faroer club Torshavn... we were kicked out in overtime by Willem II from Netherlands... and this was the end of our international period... we came in to trouble in our league for years and had had to fight against relegation till 2008, when we had to go a division deeper... :'(
2006/07 was a good year... the club was leader after 10 rounds played... but in the second half year the played 11 draws... so that we fell back on 5th place of super league, so that we could appear on ui cup 2007/08 again. and this was the beginning of the end: there was a spectacular defeat in the second round against the moldavian club Dacia Chisinau ... and after this we had a catastrophal start into the season (we lost our first 5 games)...
In December 2007 Krassimir Balakov has been presented as our new head couch... but he couldnt help us seriously: till the end of the year we came away from the last place in the classement, but we had to play two relegation games (they are called Barrage in Switzerland) against AC Bellinzona - a club from the south part of the country, where they speak italian. We lost the last game ever in Espenmoos with 2:0, so we had to go one liga deeper into challenge league... Balakov has been fired just after a little more than half a year... We had to notice, that he isnt as good as trainer as he as player was... before he came to St. Gallen made the fans of Grasshoppers the same experiences with him... in Zurich he had changed the hole team and produced 40 (!) transfers in one a half years....
Actually we play the first time since 1993 in challenge league now: We are the biggest club in this division and we've won our first five games without any problems... the fans are very enthusiastic... and we have a average attendance of more than 13 000 !!! We are on our way back... and who knows: may be we're gonna play on an international tournament again!!!
International Lounge
Yes...but I want one to my scarf collection...
