GENEVA (AP) — Like Leicester’s Premier League title in 2016 and Bodø/Glimt’s stunning rise in Norway since 2020, Swiss soccer looks set to get its own surprise champion.
Thun has never won the top-tier league in the club's 128-year history yet this season has turned the standings into a procession — even as a newly promoted club.
A 2-2 draw with second-place St. Gallen late Thursday stopped Thun’s run of 10 straight wins yet coach Mauro Lustrinelli’s team is 14 points clear with 10 rounds left.
“We are also a young team in the sense that the team is experiencing its first Super League,” Lustrinelli told Swiss public broadcaster SRF after his players conceded a stoppage-time goal to drop points for the first time since December.
Thun heads Sunday to local rival Young Boys, a 17-time title winner and Champions League regular in recent years, as the current best team in Switzerland.
Thun is the latest unheralded European club taking inspiration from Leicester.
Last year, Union Saint-Gilloise won its first Belgian title for 90 years and tiny Mjällby was champion of Sweden for the first time in its 86-year history.
Title races across Europe see Hearts on course for a first Scottish title in 66 years and Paris Saint-Germain being chased by Lens which won its only French title 28 years ago.
The most common link is clubs in provincial towns and cities run on low budgets with a collective team-first ethic.
“You really feel that it’s like a family,” Lustrinelli said last year when extending his contract at the club where he was once a star striker and has coached for four seasons.
It took Thun five years to get out of the second division after being relegated in 2020. That period included severe financial issues and being part of a multi-club ownership group backed by American and Chinese investors.
Thun is independent and locally owned again, and built a plan with Lustrinelli for a team playing the direct, pressing style he wants with two central strikers.
Top scorer this season is 12-goal Elmin Rastoder, a Swiss-born North Macedonia international who could feature in the World Cup playoffs against Denmark later this month.
Rastoder’s strike partner Thursday was Brighton Labeau, once a teammate of Kylian Mbappé, who is three years younger, when they were both in the Monaco academy.
Thun's star prospect is Ethan Meichtry, a Switzerland under-21 midfielder who could yet make the World Cup squad.
Thun was one of the smallest clubs to play in the Champions League after Lustrinelli’s 20-goal season lifted the team to Swiss league runner-up in 2005.
Thun advanced through two qualifying rounds to reach the elite stage, finishing third in a group behind Arsenal and Ajax.
Back then, Thun played European games at Young Boys’ stadium in Bern because its old home was below UEFA standard.
If Thun enters the Champions League in the second qualifying round in July, home games should be at its 10,000-seat Stockhorn Arena — with artificial turf, just like at Bodø/Glimt inside the Arctic Circle in Norway.
The Swiss champion must win through three qualifying rounds to reach the 36-team league phase.
Thun will soon be the home of Switzerland’s soccer federation.
The Swiss Football Home project was approved last August and will include a new headquarters for the federation plus training fields for national teams. Next door will likely be the next Swiss champion.
“The road is still long," Lustrinelli said of the 10-game run-in, "and we want everyone who will help us get those 30 points.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Hedwiges Maduro of Ajax, right, in a duel for the ball with Mauro Lustrinelli of FC Thun during the UEFA Champions League group B soccer match between AFC Ajax and FC Thun at the Arena stadium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Tuesday Oct. 18, 2005. (AP Photo/Fred Ernst, file)
