“Zidane called me and recommended Bettoni”

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David Bettoni’s start was pretty bad. 0:4 at YB. Shouldn’t you have brought Paolo Tramezzani back?
Paolo has a contract until the end of the season, but wanted a longer contract. Not me.

Do you plan long term with Bettoni? After all, he was allowed to take two assistants with him.
He also has a contract until June, just like his assistants.

After the resignation of Fabio Celestini, her son and sports director Barthélémy said that a man who knows the league and the team is needed. The opposite has come.
In Switzerland, the coaches are like the referees. They are scarce.

Alex Frei would have been available. Blick columnist Kubilay Türkyilmaz also recommended Frei.
Alex is still under contract in Basel. Solving this takes time.

Why did you choose Bettoni?
He won the Champions League three times.

But as an assistant.
Zinedine Zidane told me that without Bettoni he could never have won the premier class three times.

What was it like when Zidane called you?
Well, the intermediary who put Bettoni in touch asked me if I wanted Zidane’s opinion too. Logically I wanted to and let him give him my number. Soon after, Zidane called me.

What else did he say?
That Bettoni was his main ally. And that he had always loved to come to Zion.

Why fight tooth and nail against relegation when top football is over in a year or so?
As long as I finance the whole thing, I’m doing fine.

Kubi also said he was sure they would not stop begging.
Kubi can believe that. But he can’t see into my head. And he says: Everything is finite.

So there was no change of mind?
No. That is not possible without a stadium anyway. St. Gallen and Lucerne left us miles away with their jewelry. Lugano will also get a new stadium soon. What do we have? Fiddling with stadium parking and gravel roads. No, the days of patronage presidents à la Facchinetti and Constantin are over.

And what about the juniors?
The junior top teams have cost me about six million Swiss francs. The city only pays half a million of them. Imagine that! The elite teams will escape. Only basic football remains. As usual in a Promotion League team.

Back to the season. The trend has been miserable lately.
The first third of the season was good. The second disastrous. Now comes the third. We must reverse the trend.

Can this team do that?
It managed to win five games. So yes.

It’s probably just a matter of not being the last.
This is what it looks like. Even if only four third-place wins are missing.

Say Mario Balotelli. What happened that he missed again against YB?
He was sick, had a fever. He told me he had had intermittent fevers since he got sick with Covid. We wanted that clarified.

And?
The checks revealed nothing alarming. On the contrary: the tests were surprisingly good.

What is he doing now?
How beautiful? He is now training normally again. Also at home. Look at his body… (CC texts some pics)

A reader sent us another photo of what Balotelli was supposed to show off at Dubai Airport last week…
Impossible! Then he would have had to fly back and forth on the same day.

Will he remain captain?
The coach decides that, so I don’t interfere. But I don’t think any action is needed to change that.

Source : Blick