The ultimate national list: these are the 15 best Swiss footballers in history

Blick presents the 15 best Swiss national players in history. And now your opinion counts! Is it right to focus primarily on the Xhaka/Shaqiri generation? So why is Stéphane Chapuisat number one? Does Heinz Hermann belong in this list? Who is missing? Discuss in the comments below.

It is primarily a song that makes Hermann appear on this list. But soon he will be overtaken and then he should disappear from the list. The Zurich player is a national record player with 118 appearances. However, in his 13 years in the national team, he has not even participated in a final round. He stands for the era of honorable defeats like no other. 70 of his 118 matches in red and white were test matches! Granit Xhaka, who is expected to overtake him in the game against Belarus on October 12 in Israel and three days later in St. Gallen, has played just 32 friendlies. And Hermann was never abroad either. He won four championship titles with GC and two with Xamax.

With 108 caps, the Luzern fullback is number 6 on the all-time list. He wins the cup with GC, then moves to Lille, Lazio Rome and Juventus. He plays 258 games with Turin and wins seven league titles in a row. With the national team he participates in all possible finals, with the exception of the EM 2012, for which Switzerland is not eligible. Due to the Corona postponement of the EM 2020 by one year, he missed his sixth final participation. From 2015 to the end of his career, he is captain.

He was the defensive chief of the Swiss World Cup and the European Championships in 1994 and 1996. Geiger won the championship title with four different clubs and the cup just as often. He played two years for the then big Saint-Etienne in Ligue 1. He spent ten years as a coach in Switzerland before disappearing into the anonymity of North Africa and Saudi Arabia. He then applies to Servette as a coach, gets the job and leads the Geneva team back to Super League and Champions League qualification.

In his first international match in 1922 against the Netherlands, the native of Zermatt scored three goals. At the 1924 Olympic Games, where Switzerland won silver, Abegglen scored six goals. With 32 goals, he is number three on the national list of all-time goalscorers. He became champion six times with final classification. He was co-founder of the association Neuchâtel Xamax. The palindrome Xamax goes back to his nickname Xam.

If someone is considered a legend in one of the biggest clubs in the world, Liverpool FC, then he is a very big one. Via Xamax, HSV and Blackburn Rovers, the Freiburger ends up with the Reds, for whom he appears 205 times. Unforgettable the season in which Liverpool won five titles: UEFA Cup, FA Cup. League Cup, English Super Cup, UEFA Super Cup. In the national team, Henchoz took part in the EM finals in 1996 and 2004. Both times Switzerland is eliminated after the group matches.

The list of great national goalkeepers is impressive: Séchehaye, Ballabio, Elsener, Prosperi, Burgener, Pascolo, Zuberbühler, Benaglio. But none were as successful as Sommer. The man from Zurich became champion four times with FCB, guarded Borussia Mönchengladbach’s goal for eight and a half years and won the 2023 trophy with Bayern. He has been number one in the national team since 2015 and is a record goalkeeper by far. Sommer reaches the round of 16 in all finals. Highlight in 2021: De Nati knocks out world champions France because Sommer holds onto Mbappé’s decisive penalty.

He is the epitome of FC Zurich par excellence! He knew no other shirt: 554 games, 103 goals, six championship titles, five cup wins. In addition, two semi-finals of the championship cup. Perhaps the most elegant Swiss director of all time, he twice participated in a World Cup with the national team: in Chile in 1962 and in England in 1966. But the Nati lost all matches. In 2001, with only one year of professional experience, he became national coach and led the team to the 2004 European Championship, the 2006 World Cup (with the scandalous barrage in Istanbul) and coached the 2008 European Home Championship.

He is the national top scorer – and with 42 goals he is well ahead of Kubilay Türkyilmaz (34). Frei was not particularly fast, technically not excellent. But the Basel native’s nose was unsurpassed. Of its four participations in the final, Switzerland only reached the eighth finals in 2006. With FCB he became champion four times and top scorer twice. He also succeeds with Rennes in Ligue 1. As a coach, he will be promoted to the Super League with Winterthur in 2023.

Born in France, except for a three-year spell at Olympique Lyon, he always stays in Geneva, is champion 4 times and top scorer 3 times with Servette. At the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, he scored both goals in the 2-2 draw against the hosts and went down in history as São Paulo’s hero. At the 1954 World Cup at home, he made all four Swiss appearances. But Fatton’s most famous song is this: he scores 273 times in the NLA. That’s an all-time record. Even for Eugen (Bomben-) Meier from YB, who scored 247 goals.

Champions League, champion and cup winner in one of the top 5 leagues in just one season as a regular player – Akanji is the first national player to achieve that. With Borussia Dortmund he also won the DFB Cup in 2021. Unlike Shaq and Ciriacio Sforza, the two other top winners from Helvetia, he has always been an undisputed regular player – and in what is probably the best team in the world right now! With the Nati, the central defender and son of a Nigerian has reached the knockout stage in all three of his appearances in the final.

They called him Goldfoot, after his nickname Seppe. At the 1954 World Cup in his own country, he scored against Italy in the group stage match and twice in the decider against the Azzurri for a place in the quarter-finals. And in what is probably the most legendary Swiss World Cup match of all time, the incredible heat battle against Austria, this unforgettable and painful 5:7, he even managed a hat-trick. With six goals, he is the second best World Cup goalscorer behind Kocsis of Hungary (11 goals).

The 2009 U17 World Champion and 2011 U21 runner-up won the FA Cup twice with Arsenal, but no international title. However, he is a central figure in Vice-Champion 2023 and was also the captain for a time. After winning two league titles and a cup win with FCB, he spent four years at Borussia Mönchengladbach. He captains the most successful national team of all time and has played in five finals.

Ciri won both the Champions League and the UEFA Cup in two different periods with Bayern Munich. He also lost the UEFA Cup final with Inter Milan against Schalke 04. He performed a real miracle when he was promoted to the Bundesliga with Kaiserslautern and immediately after that the championship title, which no other team has achieved so far. He has been a mainstay of the national team since the 1994 World Cup and also captained it from 1996 to 2001. Sforza coached Lucerne, GC and Basel.

The 2011 vice European U21 champion is the title collector par excellence: he is the only Swiss to win the Champions League twice (with Bayern and Liverpool), he was also German and English champion and cup winner. The native of Basel took part in four world championships and two European championships. Shaq has scored all finals since 2014! The only drawback: he often did not play for Bayern, Inter and Liverpool.

Chappi was the top foreign scorer in the Bundesliga for a long time. He is still number five today with 106 goals. Played a prominent role in Borussia Dortmund’s Champions League victory in 1997. In the national team, a topper in the 1994 team that took Switzerland to a final round again after 28 years. Was also in the team at the EM 2004.