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The long-awaited European football season is slated to get underway and here is one team you may want to follow from the Swiss Super League and that is FC Lugano.
The 111-year-old team from the town of Lugano on the Swiss-Italian border has certainly gone through highs and lows. They have won the Swiss first division on three occasions, the last being in 1949 and have won the Swiss cup three times, most recently in 1993.
Three years later they famously knocked out Inter Milan in the first round of the UEFA Cup. However eight years later the club faced severe financial difficulty and to the point of bankruptcy. In 2004, the club FC Lugano merged with Malcantone Agno and entered the second division and were known as AC Lugano.
However, in its 100th year in 2007, the club were taken over and the shareholders voted to revert to being FC Lugano. It took until 2015 for the black and white of Lugano to reach the top division of the Swiss Leagues again. The first season back saw them nearly relegated, but they survived because of their victory in the relegation play-off. Naturally, they have not looked back since.
The next season they finished 3rd to qualify for the Europa League and got their first taste of European football since 2002, where they finished third in their group. However, Europa League football cost them in the league as they finished 8th the season before last. On the other hand, last season they finished 3rd again in what a crazy race for 3rd. The gap between 3rd place Lugano and 8th placed Sion was three points.
What makes it more incredible is the fact that four teams finished with 46 points. The teams who qualified for the Europa League were decided by goal difference. Lugano had the best goal difference to finish third and automatically qualify for the group stages, whilst Thun and Luzern have to go through the qualification stages and St. Gallen missed out altogether.
Lugano made an inspired decision in sacking their previous manager Guillermo Abascal when they were 6th in October 2018 and replaced him with Swiss Fabio Celestini. Celestini has rotated formations between playing a back four and a back three. The back three on paper last season seemed to be the suitable system as they won more but conceded more than with the back four.
Lugano had the best defence apart from the top two of Young Boys and FC Basel which was vital to get their Europa League place. However they scored the least in the top five with 50 goals, with half of their goals coming from strikers Carlinhos and Alexander Gerndt.
So far this season, Lugano have stuck to playing with a back three with mixed results in their first three matches. The first match was a comfortable 4-0 victory against FC Zürich, then a 0-0 draw at home to FC Sion but then a 2-0 defeat away to the reigning champions Young Boys.
Lugano and its fans would hope the Europa League is not a huge distraction to the league because if they are not careful they could drop out. Last season saw the team who has won the most Swiss titles in Grasshopper relegated, so anything can happen.
