Grasshopper Club Zürich : FC St. Gallen 1879

Our first visit to Switzerland took us to the financial stronghold of the Swiss - to Zurich. At extremely high April temperatures, we explored the beautiful city. However, it quickly became clear that we will probably hold back here culinary something. The price level is nevertheless neatly high and so was a can Appenzller Quöllfrisch on the shore of the Zürichsee the highest of feelings.

In the evening, I then made my way to the Zurich Letzigrund to watch the game of Grasshoppers against the FC St. Gallen. The actual home stadium of GC is actually the Hardturm Stadium, but that is already closed since 2007 because of its dilapidation. A new stadium project should be started together with FC Zurich in 2015, but the population voted against it.

The season of the Grasshoppers has been more than disappointing so far. Especially in the second half of the season, one defeat followed the next and so the club is now in current relegation trouble. Already in mid-March, a new head coach was appointed in the form of Carlos Bernegger. But even under him, it had not yet been enough for a home victory. Therefore, the game against St. Gallen was enormously important for all involved and the fans also goaded their team with appropriate banners.

But the fans from St. Gallen had also traveled in large numbers to Zurich and showed a great away support. Also some Pyro-inserts were offered, which almost brought the stadium speaker to despair. Finally, he gave up and waived further announcements.

At the beginning of the game immediately the first excitement: The flag of the linesman broke and so an official sprinted together with a new flag in the style of a Uain Bolt over the track of the Letzigrunds to fix the material problem.

The game started with some uncertainties on both sides, before Zurich then took more and more control and deservedly took the lead in the 35th minute through Munas Dabbur. But instead of taking advantage of one of the following chances, it was St. Gallen who took advantage of a defensive mistake at the break and equalized through Andreas Wittwer.

This equalizer didn't seem to have hit the Grasshoppers too hard, though, as they maintained the upper hand after the break. But it took until the 70 minute before Munas Dabbur again trotted to the lead. And this time GC did it better. Only 5 minutes later, Caio provided a sensational free kick for the preliminary decision.

After that, nothing much happened and the players, the coach and the fans celebrated exuberantly the first victory in the new calendar year.