After six years as team leader: the ruthless Sutter has had his best time in St. Gallen

The high-ranking gentlemen were there because they had just expelled someone from their circle – the most famous. Farewell was said to ex-Nati star Alain Sutter (55), the sporting conscience of St. Gallen for six years. To be precise, he was driven from office. Hüppi will probably try to cover up the divorce for a long time.

Roger Stilz was allowed to take the stage in Sutter’s place. And this at a time when the Espen are in second place in the Super League and Sutter can boast of having achieved many of the sporting goals that he and Hüppi announced upon taking office. Including two cup finals and the brilliant 2019/20 season, which almost ended with the title win.

It should be Bravehearts!

And exactly: Sutter especially wanted to see Bravehearts, as he liked to say in his first interviews. Courageous football players who fearlessly enter into sporting competition. They can lose as long as they leave their hearts on the grass and their pants covered in dirt. They wanted to attract more fans to the stadium again to get them excited. That’s what the team from St. Gallen did: the average crowd increased from 12,614 fans to 17,897 – that’s an increase of about 42 percent.

Nevertheless, Sutter has to leave because he was unwilling to hand over some of his skills to Stilz. “I feel very sorry for him as a person,” says someone who knows both the joy of a big victory and the pain of a dismissal: Fredy Bickel, CEO and sports director in Zurich, Bern or Vienna. “I have great respect for what Alain has achieved in St. Gallen.”

Hüppi also says: “Alain, together with many others who took over six years ago, managed to free the club from a challenging situation with a clear game idea.”

A refined person looks different

There were many who initially doubted Sutter. Those who saw in him the football sophistication that is said to have an esoteric touch. Who wrote books about happiness. And who occasionally flew to Mallorca to his wife Melanie’s yoga camp instead of sitting in the stands of Neuchâtel Maladière at his Espen’s away match.

However, many people were wrong about Sutter: agents, players, coaches, journalists. Sutter dresses neatly. He is eloquent, cultured and, above all, confident. When Blick published a story in 2018 about his hairstyles over the years, he rolled his eyes because the subject bored him. Or when he was mocked as “GC-Kasperli” during his brief stint as WG vice president in 2012, he didn’t like it much either. But get angry about that? No. Life is too short. He also treats journalists who criticize him with the utmost decency.

But Sutter can also be what few people think he can be: ruthless. «Alain has a clear opinion, a clear idea. And then he does not deviate from it,” says Bickel, who saw the young Alain Sutter as press secretary in the early 1990s and later sometimes sat with him at the negotiating table. Other officers who have worked with him also call him correct, decent, but also clear and consistent.

He threw Contini out without pity

Some players, but also coaches, felt this: Giorgio Contini had to leave in the spring of 2018, even though the 2000 champion hero and the team were on course for the European Cup. Sutter wasn’t convinced by him. He made a radical style change to Red Bull-style football with high pressure and counter-pressing under Peter Zeidler (61). Today he says: “We worked together very harmoniously. There’s nothing else to say.’ Sutter grabbed the trainer and held him tight.

He shaved players who were no longer good enough for him without pity. For many he acted consistently, for others he acted brutally. And when the players rebelled against interim coach Boro Kuzmanovic (61), Sutter marched onto the training field and confronted the players.

And there is Nassim Ben Khalifa. Sutter saw something special in him. He believed that with lots of one-on-one conversations, with tolerance and dedication, even more could be teased out of the confident striker. Sutter once said, looking back, “I’ve never invested so much in a player.” He will be bitterly disappointed. Ben Khalifa is developing into a stubborn, unruly, proud player with whom coach Zeidler is getting along less and less well. He rejects a transfer to the Challenge League. So it is put cold. The club excludes him from individual training. But Ben Khalifa successfully returns to training. But the relationship cannot be resolved. Sutter drops him.

Others also have to go, even if they are popular in the team and with the fans: full-back Andreas Wittwer, for example, or Jérémy Guillemenot.

Almost a national coach

In 2019, Sutter negotiated with the Swiss Football Association about the newly created position of national coach. He made the final selection before Pierluigi Tami was chosen over him. Sutter would have appeared consistent and confident there, too. Maybe too consistent. This is also why Tami, who was easier to care for, was preferred over him.

Sutter could still be Espen’s athletic director today if he was willing to come to terms with Stilz. However, he categorically refused to share responsibility. He stayed consistent. Until the bitter end.