Mental problems and defensive crisis my ass. Young Boys show against Lille that they can hold their own against big opponents despite ups and downs.
12.12.2025, 06:39
12.12.2025, 07:03
SDA
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- YB win 1-0 against Lille in the Europa League and are fully in the race for the play-off places after 6 of 8 matchdays.
- It is a rarity for the Bernese to celebrate a one-nil win.
- The Bernese players and coach are completely satisfied after the game.
The defense has been the problem child of Young Boys this season. The Bernese have conceded 29 goals in the Super League so far, or 1.8 per game. Only the bottom four in the current table have had to fish the ball out of their goal more often. In the Europa League, they have even conceded twelve goals after six matchdays.
So the result after the win over Lille on Thursday evening stands out all the more: 1:0 - a clean sheet. Bern have only managed this twice in all competitions since September: against bottom-of-the-table Winterthur in the championship and against Bucharest in the Europa League.
It is therefore understandable that both coach Gerardo Seoane and various players emphasized precisely that after the game.
The mentality was different
Defender Gregory Wüthrich says: "The defense was a big topic during the week. We knew that we needed to improve." You could see that everyone was fighting for everyone else.
At the weekend, the Super League spectators were presented with a different picture. Sion sent the Bernese home with a 2-0 defeat, YB seemed overwhelmed and played inadequately defensively. Seoane himself had said the day before the Europa League match that he had recently seen his team regress slightly.
Just over 24 hours later, he rightly sounded a lot more positive. "Setbacks have to be taken into account. The willingness to learn every day is important. I believe we can still play better football."
But where does the sudden improvement in defensive performance come from? One thing in particular has changed in the team: the mentality. Seoane observed: "The atmosphere in the dressing room, the energy on the pitch, that was completely different to the weekend." The victory was achieved above all thanks to willpower.
Wüthrich also noticed that. "The mentality against Sion was simply not good enough, we can't have games like that." He is therefore all the more proud of the victory without conceding a goal. That was without question a matter of mentality.
"Thank God"
But even if the players are in a positive mood, Seoane speaks of a "great" victory that the team "cannot be given enough credit for". Without a little help from Lille, the exploit against the current fourth-placed team in Ligue 1 would probably not have been possible.
A red card after 30 minutes tipped the momentum from the visitors to Young Boys. "The sending off certainly had an impact on the game," admitted Seoane.
An hour in superior numbers allowed his team to increasingly take control of the game and create chances, after these had been in short supply in the first 20 minutes.
"It's not always easier with one man more. You know you have to win even more decisively now," said goalscorer Darian Males after the game. He said he was proud of how the team kept calm and didn't rush when there were no goals for a while. "I just really speculated on the goal. Thank God it went in. And apart from that, we defended well," he concludes.
Everything is still possible
The win now puts YB in 21st place in the table, at least for the time being - and significantly increases their chances of reaching the play-offs, for which the top 24 teams qualify.
They still need points against Lyon at home and VfB Stuttgart away. But the players are in agreement. A win like this gives them a boost - motivation that they definitely want to take into the new year for the last two matchdays of the league phase. "We can achieve great things," said Alan Virginius, who provided the assist for the 1:0. "We'll keep at it," assured Wüthrich.
It's clear to see that the victory has lifted a weight off the players' shoulders. "We really want to win against Lyon," said Males, while Wüthrich looked ahead and said: "We've shown that we can hold our own against big opponents, especially at home."
