GC is starting the Super League season with a new coach, young players and some optimism. Sporting director Alain Sutter and coach Gerald Scheiblehner want to see development above all else.
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- Grasshoppers are starting the season with a new coach. Sporting director Alain Sutter and coach Gerald Scheiblehner are focusing in particular on young talent.
- Ahead of the season opener against Luzern on Saturday, sporting director Alain Sutter is in an atmosphere of "excited joy".
- According to Scheiblehner, veteran Amir Abrashi should be relieved as a leading figure, but remains an important player.
- For Sutter, it is primarily the sporting development that counts, not the league position.
Gerald Scheiblehner has been coach at GC for a month now. The 48-year-old previously worked at Blau-Weiss Linz and left his home country for the Hoppers for the first time. Although Austrian football has caught up with Swiss football, the Super League is "more interesting" for him, especially in terms of "stadiums and spectators", Scheiblehner said at a press conference.
On Saturday, he and his new employer will face Luzern at the Letzigrund(the game will be shown live on blue TV from 6pm). "I'm looking forward to it," he says. After four test matches, points are now at stake. "I'm excited to see how the young players put that into practice."
Indeed, sporting director Alain Sutter has brought a lot of talented players on board. He describes the mood before the start of the season as "excited joy". They have now worked hard together for four weeks in preparation, and now it will be exciting to see how many old mechanisms are still there and how many new ideas are already in place, says Sutter ahead of the "assessment of the current situation".
However, they will not enter the championship race with only young talents, even if a few players are likely to play their first Super League game, says Sutter. Amir Abrashi will once again play an important role, as Scheiblehner explains: "He is a model footballer."
In addition, the GC cult figure has a connection in the dressing room and does not focus on himself, explains the coach. But they also want to "take a load off him", as he has had to take on a lot of responsibility in the last two years. Without this additional task, he believes he can have his head free to play.
Ranking list is not the focus
Sutter is satisfied with the squad planning, saying that most of the players were able to take part in the entire preparation. For the former international (62 caps), the focus is not on the team's position in the championship, but "the way they perform" and whether the team has the "right attitude", explains the 57-year-old.
Scheiblehner, meanwhile, has not yet seen much of Zurich, having spent more time in Niederhasli, he explains. For him, the GC chapter is a completely new beginning. So far, everyone at the club has pulled together. "I'm delighted with the boys, they all want to learn and are open to breaking new ground."
He raves about the "top training conditions" here. What does he want to see from his protégés on the pitch? "Passion, enthusiasm and solidarity in both offense and defense," mentions Scheiblehner. You simply have to see that the team has a plan and that they always have the self-confidence to want to win against every opponent, he demands.
Neither Sutter nor Scheiblehner feel any great pressure to get the struggling traditional club back on its feet. For the Austrian, pressure can even trigger "positive energy", as he emphasizes. The barrage participant of the last two seasons can certainly make good use of this. Petar Pusic will certainly not be part of the new GC edition 25/26. The former fan favorite last played for Osijek in Croatia, but his contract expired at the end of the season. However, talks with him have not taken place, says Sutter.
