The Miracle of Bill

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A large poster in two languages ​​welcomes visitors to the far east of the city: “Bienvenue in Biel”. On the left, at the Swiss Tennis Center, Roger Federer and Belinda Bencic have become world stars. The street leading to the tennis hall is called “Roger-Federer-Allee”. Just behind it is the Tissot Arena, home of FC Biel and EHC Biel. The Bözingen district, in which the sports facilities are located, also enjoys a rather questionable reputation. The houses on the main street are run-down, empty warehouses, massage parlours, sex shops. To the north, the A16 motorway winds on mighty pillars into the Jura. Not far from there, on a Friday morning in September 2010, the police dog Faro caught the runaway pensioner Peter Hans Kneubühl.

Poverty and precious watches

Biel, with its 55,000 inhabitants Switzerland’s largest bilingual city, could hardly be more different. Four years ago, UBS moved into a back office for 600 employees in the middle of the city. Infrastructure costs and rents are cheaper in Biel than in Zurich.

Swatch recently inaugurated its new headquarters. An architectural masterpiece by the Japanese Shigeru Ban. Modeled after a dragon’s tail, the 240-meter-long and 35-meter-wide building meanders along the Schuess River. Rolex, the second largest watch giant in the region, has built a new factory in the eastern industrial area for 500 million euros in recent years. The watch industry, on which the city and the entire region had lived for decades, was practically dead by the early 1970s. Unemployment rose to dizzying heights and more than 10,000 people left the city.

Today, the Swatch, Omega and Rolex buildings are among the most modern in the entire canton. But not all that glitters in Biel is gold when the sun disappears behind the first Jurassic chain in the evening.

On the one hand, there is the burden of debt that weighs on the city of Biel. There are now 800 million. In addition, there is the highest payment percentage of all Swiss cities (10.5 percent). Erich Fehr (SP), mayor of Biel for 12 years, says: “Of course we are not proud of it. But in recent years there has been a change. The social assistance percentage has fallen for the fifth time in a row. The number of residents is increasing again and it is also gratifying that we have practically no newcomers left who immediately end up on social assistance.”

But Fehr also knows that the cheap housing available in the city of Biel continues to attract many poor families. What worries Fehr most, however, is the below-average tax revenue: “Biel has always been a working-class and industrial town. And there wages are much lower than in the banking or services sector. » As a result, every tax franc in Biel goes directly to welfare.

Among other things, Fehr is pinning his hopes on the new campus of the Bern University of Applied Sciences, which will be ready for occupation in five years’ time, and on the innovation park next to it. The students there should network with Biel technology companies “and ideally later develop their own ideas and establish companies here,” says Fehr. Compared to other cities, Biel also has many vacant lots and relatively cheap vacant apartments.

A city on the rise

Despite a high social quota and a lack of tax revenue, a slight upward trend can be observed. Expo 2002 helped accelerate long overdue infrastructure projects. A Challenger ATP tournament has been taking place in the Swiss Tennis Center for two years now. The women’s national football team played regularly in the Tissot Arena, as did the Swiss national ice hockey team on the ice rink next door.

And then of course there is EHC Biel, who first convincingly knocked SC Bern and then ZSC out of the play-offs. In the last semi-final series, Biel beat Zurich 4-0. Mayor Fehr, who himself played for the Bielers as a junior for years and later trained the youngsters, thinks that the Seelanders can do it again for the first time in 40 years: “The omens are good.”

As a young boy, Fehr was in the stadium for the first national title in 1978. “Unfortunately I had to go home before the trophy was handed over.”

At that time, EHC Biel had to count on the support of SC Bern for the last home game against Kloten. Because the city of Bern beat leader Langnau that evening, while at the same time the team from Biel won 4-1 at home, the championship cup had to be brought from the Emmental to Seeland first. So the championship party only started when little Erich was already in bed.

In the abyss

Anyone who knows the history of the EHCB like no other is the Bielse sports journalist Beat Moning. He has been writing about EHC Biel for the “Bieler Tagblatt” for 40 years.

He experienced all three championship titles (1978, 1981 and 1983) up close. While the Bielers were the benchmark of everything in Swiss ice hockey in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the deep fall began in the late 1980s. Sports journalist Beat Moning recalls: “Every year from 1986 onwards was a pure struggle for survival. At the end of the season, almost a million francs were missing. »

In the 1990s, the situation became really dramatic. Coaches and foreigners came and went. And after the departure of Willy Gassmann, the legendary patron and publisher of the Bieler Tagblatt, the bottomless fall began. It was only thanks to the support of donors, who paid outstanding bills at the end of the season, that the EHCB could be kept alive.

Train until the police come

Even the legendary Biel defender Jakob “Köbi” Kölliker, who coached the gang at the beginning of the 1993/94 season, could not turn things around. One of the most bizarre stories to ever happen in Swiss ice hockey took place under his leadership. After a 7-0 defeat in Zug, the then president Ueli Roth, a sometimes somewhat choleric real estate entrepreneur from Biel, was so angry that he ordered his losers to walk behind the team bus for several minutes. Arriving in Biel, the players also had to go to penalty training. Biel’s goalkeeper at the time, Olivier Anken, remembers this episode well: «We played bandy in the stadium, a Finnish form of ice hockey played with a ball. After 15 minutes, the city police of Biel put an end to the crowds. Neighbors next to the ice rink had complained because we disturbed their sleep.”

In December, shortly after the penalty session, Kölliker’s engagement ended, and a year and a half later, the EHCB also ended. The residents of Biel were relegated to the National League B in 1995.

Player wages from the briefcase

The club was in danger of going bankrupt. The outstanding player wages could only be paid after the season because the current sports director Martin Steinegger switched to rival SCB for 300,000 francs after relegation. Markus Bundeli, Bieler’s team manager at the time, had the 300,000 francs paid out in cash by the SCB. With a bulging suitcase he got into the car, drove from Bern straight to the ice rink in Biel and paid the players their wages in their hand.

For 13 years, EHC Biel languished in the second highest division and failed to qualify for the competition four times. Under new management and thanks to a moratorium on debt restructuring, the EHCB survived its second-rate status.

It was not until 2008 that they were promoted again against EHC Basel. It was the birth of the battle cry “Ici c’est Bienne” of the Biel fans, who wanted to use it to express their uniqueness: “We are different from all the others.”

However, the team from Biel then had to relegate three more times, with the future once again hanging by a thread.

Since then the club has stabilized. CEO Daniel Villard and sporting director Martin Steinegger have both been with the club for more than a decade. Coach Antti Törmänen has been with the gang since 2017. Twice in the past five years, the Bielers were in the semi-finals of the play-offs and now for the first time in history in the play-off final.

Goalie legend Olivier Anken is confident that after 40 years the people of Biel will finally succeed again with the big coup: “The whole club works seriously and with a lot of patience. The junior division is among the best in the country. And very important: the team is a unit and showed character against both SCB and ZSC. »

Kölliker also believes in the title: “The team is tactically and running strong, and also very compact and balanced. From the chef to the ice cream master, everyone is moving in the same direction. Everything fits. For me, Biel is the clear favorite in the final.”

Source : Blick