Johann Vogel, Alex Frei, Christian Gross: they all hold Swiss Champions League records - and not only them. blue Sport goes into detail.
The record player
It may have been a few years ago, but Johann Vogel (47) is still the Swiss footballer with the most appearances in the Champions League. He was on the pitch 52 times when the royal anthem rang out - the first time in 1995 for GC against Hungarian champions Ferencvaros Budapest. He was just 18 years old at the time. The youngster soon became one of the best six-man players in Europe, ripped off, clever and with nerves of steel.
After his apprenticeship in Zurich, the former national team captain moved on to Eindhoven, Milan, Sevilla and Blackburn. His former coach Eric Gerets, himself once a player of the highest international caliber, once called him "the most tactically intelligent player I have ever coached". The only unpleasant thing was his dismissal from the national team by telephone before the home European Championship.
The record goalscorer
It comes as no surprise which Swiss player scored the most goals in the Royal League: Alex Frei - our top scorer in the national team with 42 goals. With eight goals, he contributed to many a magical night for Basel. Whether it was turning the ball into the crossbar against Bayern or steering it over the line at the second post against Man United, making it possible for the red and blue to reach the round of 16 in 2011. Frei was a reliable scorer and a feared set-piece taker.
He is followed by Stéphane Chapuisat (Dortmund) and Kubi Türkyilmaz (Galatasaray and GC) with seven goals each. However, if the Champions Cup (until 1992) were included in the ranking, someone else would be at the top of the Swiss scorers: GC legend Claudio Sulser with 11 goals - two of them in the epic 2-0 win against Real Madrid in 1978.
The record-breaking coach
He was the first Swiss to play in the premier league - and the most often: Christian Gross (70). He has coached at the highest level of club football 33 times: at GC, Basel and VfB Stuttgart. In 1996, he led GC to victory in the Amsterdam ArenA and to the quarter-finals. Despite scoring nine points, GC ultimately failed to reach the next round against Ajax - never before and never since has a team with nine points missed out. And he experienced many great nights with FCB during their participation in 2002. He prepared his teams for the big games like few others in his guild, both tactically and mentally.
Unforgotten: The 3:3 against Liverpool, which made FCB the first Swiss team to survive the group stage - and was appropriately announced by Gross himself as a "Night to Remember". The then FCB professional Mario Cantaluppi later said: "Nobody could have prepared us better for the games." Lucien Favre was the second most successful Swiss football coach: 23 times with Gladbach and Dortmund.
The record team
FC Basel stormed through the group stage in 2017: 6 games, 13 points. Never has a Swiss team been better. Raphael Wicky's squad put the icing on the cake in their first home game. Benfica Lisbon were swept out of the Joggeli with a 5:0 win - the highest Swiss victory in the competition to date.
The man of the evening was Dimitri Oberlin, who scored twice and won a penalty. His first goal was historic: in twelve seconds, he sprinted from his own penalty area into the opposition's penalty area - and slid the ball into the goal. It goes without saying that the talk afterwards was of Basel's Usain Bolt. However, the performance remained a rarity: Oberlin rarely shone - and was soon sent off.
The budget record team
The title of this section may sound bourgeois and unwieldy - but the team featured here was quite the opposite: stinking smart, damn clever and surprisingly successful. In 2005, FC Thun stormed into the Champions League as one of the biggest underdogs in the history of the competition.
Dynamo Kiev and Malmö knocked the Bernese Oberlanders out of the way on their way to the group stage, where they finished third behind Arsenal and Ajax and ahead of Sparta Prague. Thun came within a whisker of scoring at Highbury, the old home of Arsenal FC, in the opening game - Arsenal star Dennis Bergkamp only scored in stoppage time to make it 2-1. Thun's budget at the time? A good five million francs.
The record referee
He comes from Würenlos, later made a career as a TV pundit, was denounced by English tabloids in 2004 and was even followed back home by fans from the island: Urs Meier. He is now 65 years old and has refereed a premier league match just as often - ten games more than his compatriot Massimo Busacca (55). Meier's first appearance on the royal stage was a stodgy 0-0 draw between England's then champions Blackburn and Bulgaria's champions Legia Warsaw. The highlight followed in 2002, when Meier took charge of the final between Real and Bayer Leverkusen (2-1).
