From the controversial Mendy transfer to criminal training sessions for young players: FC Zurich has made a lot of headlines - the club's management around presidential couple Ancillo and Heliane Canepa provide answers in the "Heimspiel" program on blue Sport.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Looking back, FCZ presidents Ancillo and Heliane Canepa describe the transfer of Benjamin Mendy as an "absolute mistake".
- The club management also distances itself from controversial punitive training sessions for young players.
- Ancillo Canepa emphasizes that he only found out about this after the fact.
FC Zurich signed Benjamin Mendy in February 2025. The supposed transfer coup with the 2018 world champion triggered numerous negative reactions. The former Manchester City player spent several months in custody for alleged sexual offenses. Although the Frenchman was acquitted after two court cases, the accusation of a questionable attitude towards women remained.
The 31-year-old was also unfit for sport. After less than six months, FCZ ended the chapter. How do FCZ president couple Ancillo and Heliane Canepa view the transfer in retrospect? "It was an absolute mistake", Heliane says plainly in the program Heimspiel on blue Sport.
Her husband Ancillo explains the background: "When we had the opportunity to sign Mendy, we had the information that he had been charged in England but had been acquitted. And since we had already experienced a case like this one or two years previously - the person who brought charges against the player was later sued himself for making false statements - we assumed that it was another case like this."
Ancillo Canepa continued: "When he came and we got to know him personally, we took a very detailed and differentiated look at the situation with him. He was able to give a credible account of what had really happened."
The public reaction was logical, says the FCZ boss. "I understand it, we could understand that there was such a reaction. If we had known, we would obviously not have made the transfer," he emphasizes.
Canepas knew nothing about the criminal training sessions
There was also a great deal of excitement in the Swiss football scene when blue Sport wrote in the fall that FC Zurich had introduced collective punishment training due to insufficient results in the youth squad: The teenagers had to complete intensive running sessions after defeats. The higher the defeat, the more running was required.
FCZ commented on this in writing and said that they wanted to strengthen the winning mentality and resilience of the young players and called the punitive training sessions 'temporary additional training'. The strict treatment of the club's own juniors left many people red-faced.
A short time later, the club stopped the measure on Canepa's orders. Michael Wegmann, Head of Sport blue News, therefore wants to know from the Canepa couple whether they were not too far away from their head of sport during the two-year era of Milos Malenovic, because otherwise such things could have been stopped.
Malenovic was given a lot of freedom
"That's how a company works. You have a functionary and they have certain tasks that they have to perform. It can't be that every action, every activity has to be approved from the top," says Ancillo Canepa.
The 72-year-old continues: "It's important that the person who has the freedom of movement considers whether they need to discuss it with their bosses - whether these are sensitive issues."
In principle, they were already involved and therefore usually knew what was going on, according to the long-serving FCZ president: "But it's individual situations like this that didn't go down well with the public. And perhaps we only found out about them afterwards. When we heard about the criminal training, we blocked it immediately," says Ancillo Canepa.
