Switzerland. An interesting season – 5 teams competed for the title and at the end a championship play-off had to break a tie. In the lower level 3 teams fought for the top two promotional spots. Of course, the Second Division was obscure and nothing to brag about, but it had its own drama. One was at the bottom.
SC Freiburg – or FC Fribourg, depending on language – finished 14th and had to play a relegation play-off against the 13th, FC Monthey. The match ended 1-1, but Freiburg lost the penalty shoot-out 3-4 and went down. Along with FC Nordstern (Basel), 15th, which just recently played first division football, and FC Red Star (Zurich), 16th.
At the top of the table there was another drama – 3 teams battled for 2 promotional spots. FC Lugano lost the race, finishing 3rd with 38 points. The other two teams ended with equal points – 41 each – and goal-difference decided the champion of the season.
FC Winterthur finished 2nd for they had amusingly weak goal-difference for a leading team: +13. But no matter – they still managed to return to top flight. Second row from left: Adi Noventa (Trainer), Dario Zuffi, Mauro Bunkofer, Daniel Haefeli, Urs Egli, Uwe Rapolder, Sepp Roth, Christian Schleiffer, André von Niederhäusern, André Keller, Paul Kilgus (Teambetreuer).
First row: Paul Hollenstein (Physiotherapeut), Reto Arrigoni, Christian Graf, Rafael Chèlos, Markus Bachmann, Walter Christinger, Rolf Schiltknecht, Kevin Streule, Franco Girola, Manuel Lopez, Ernst Rief (Pfleger).
Goal-difference of +31 made the new champion – a little known club, named SC Zug. It was glorious and exciting achievement, but one has to look back in time to find the winners: they do not exist today, eventually merging with their neighbours FC Zug. In real time, though, it was great victory.