FC Vaduz - Road To Glory

Liechtenstein, officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking and doubly landlocked country and microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. It is the sixth smallest nation worldwide. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy headed by the prince of Liechtenstein.

This is what Wikipedia tells us about where this journey takes off. Such a wonderful place that I had the pleasure of visiting on 2021, going all around Vaduz., Triesenberg, Balzers and Steg.

I decided to give it a try, to bring the best Liechtensteiner team, FC Vaduz, back to the Swiss Super League, and possibly win something, both domestically (Liechtenstein Cup, Dieci Challenge League and Credit Suisse Super League) and internationally (where I have no illusions of winning the Champions League, or even the Europa League, but even just the Conference League would make such a great success).

Does it sound like a difficult challenge? It is, indeed. Can we make it harder? Yes we can, and why we shouldn't?

So, I decided that the whole team has to be made entirely by only Liechtensteiner players and as well the staff can't comprehend people with different Nationality.

The only ones that I've left in the team are Cédric Gasser, Tunahan Çiçek and Dejan Djokic, because they had spent more than half of the 5 years needed for getting the Liechtenstein nationality, and so they can change nationality in a couple of seasons.

Right now, Dejan Djokic already obtained the Liechtensteiner citizenship on the first season (I'm ending the second season right now), and even played 12 matches with 8 goals for the Liechtenstein national team, while Cédric Gasser and Tunahan Çiçek are 98 days short from obtaining the Liechtenstein nationality as well.

Hope to have some support for this big challenge, and I'll post here shortly a quick recap of what happened so far 🙂

With only Liechtensteiners it's going to be not hard, but super-hard! Following you here in this challenge.

Here are screenshoots of the 26 players making up my FC Vaduz, and the whole staff. Unfortunately, the doctor is Austrian and cannot be edited/dismissed, but let's ignore him as it's not editable. Quick info, yes I did used the IGE, only to make easier and faster to can sign players and especially the staff, as for some staff roles there's nothing except for the regens (which I've ignored preferring to hire only real staff), and with the IGE I've been able for example to hire some real staff for a position which he/she wasn't covering, that's all.

Quick info as well about which tactics do I use, which trainings… I always used the Spalletti 4-3-3 tactic that I've downloaded from another website, which I do like and imo makes easier to adapt even players generally in the team. For the trainings, Mike's best trainings, which I've only started to apply them since a couple of months in game.

This is what happened on the first season, which I'd say we mastered, reaching the 1st position and going back to the Super League. As well, it was a very easy thing to get, but we won the Liechtensteiner Cup, and crazily we managed to pass the qualifications for the Conference League, but easy to say we was quite immature and didn't made out from the groups, but the 3rd position still made Vaduz's best success ever in Europe, leaving Shamrock Rovers behind us on 4th position.

This is the 2nd and actual season. We're doing quite good on the Super League, where with 3 matches left we're actually 3rd and sure to get a place for the post season where the first 6 teams get to play each other once, to determinate who's winning the League.

Still have to play the semifinal of Liechtensteiner Cup vs Schaan, where in a funny situation our 2nd team will challenge Eschen/Mauren in the other semifinal. Possible “derby” in final? 😀

Conference League we made a miracle, passed the groups incredibly as 1st, and I thought for one second “well, we may get to face a team not that strong, maybe we'll just lose by short, or make another miracle”… Well, no, my connationals of Fiorentina devastated us on the 1st match, while seemed to have some pity for us on the return match and “just” made us 2 goals. Still, round of 16, best result ever for this team, but with the thought that we're a lot behind other European teams, and a success in Conference League really needs a miracle 😀

Update: Looks like losing against Fiorentina had a bad effect on our performances, as we literally did bad on next matches. We lost against Winterthur, then Lugano gave us a Football lesson beating us 6-0, and then we had a somehow decent match vs Basel, losing 1-2 against them. But, we was already qualified for the post-season tournament to determinate who's going to win the Swiss League, as we ended the regular season on 3rd place, so I'd say we did great.

In Liechtenstein Cup, we reached the final vs Eschen/Mauren and, no need to say something special about it, we're too much stronger than the other Liechtensteiner teams, and we celebrated our 50th Aktiv-Cup, which is our only way to get qualified to an European cup, the Conference League, as we cannot qualify from the Swiss league.

How it went the post season? 6 teams (Young Boys, Basel, Vaduz, Luzern, Winterthur and Servette), playing against each other, to grab the Swiss Super League trophy, that on the last 2022/23 season was won by Young Boys. We could have reached max 72 points, so it was impossible to do more than Young Boys, who could only have been challenged by Basel, 8 points behind them.

This is what happened, and this is the final league standings:
 

Not so bad for our 2nd season. In Conference League we did much more than expected (we got eliminated by Fiorentina, which arrived in final losing it against Chelsea), in the Credit Suisse Super League the 3rd place is a fabulous placement and a great starting point for next season to improve (despite the fact that still some matches we simply aren't there, like the 3-7 vs. Basel), while the Aktiv-Cup it's virtually ours every season, despite the fact that this year Eschen/Mauren did well and we won “just” 1-0. Dejan Djokic makes the challenge easier, as he gets the Liechtenstein nationality, and he scores so much goals (so far, in 2 years, 70 goals between championship, cup and conference league). 

Oh, almost forgot to say this, Grasshopper-Zurich (which on last season was relegated losing the layout against Thun) won the Challenge League, coming back to the Super League, while Sion had to face Yverdon on the playout, doing 0-0 on the 1st match, and same result in the return one, winning just at penalties against Yverdon, managing to keep playing in the Super League on next season as well.

Will update the career in some days once I'll start the 3rd season and do something on it.

Unexpected little update: I was keeping continuing to end the 2nd season and start the 3rd one, and got this message.

Basically, it talks about rules for players that comes from the team's youth team, for Europa League, saying that Vaduz is qualified for it.

I then looked for the Liechtenstein Aktiv-Cup, as from the Super League we cannot get qualified for European cups, and noticed that now who wins it get qualified for Europa League 3rd qualification turn. I guess we made Liechtenstein go up with reputation (I indeed saw such email but now I already started the 3rd season and can't retrieve anymore) with our 3rd position last year.

Unexpected really, and most probably we will not qualify for the groups as I feel we're not ready for Europa League, but it's already a great achievement 🙂

Updates: I've sold Jens Hofer, one of our two reserves DC, to Triesenberg, as he was keeping underperforming on every training session, scoring every time between 5 and 6. To replace him, I took back Fuad Rahimi, which at the beginning of the challenge I sold to Schaan as I wasn't sure of him. He's improved during these two years there, and as well he did obtained the Liechtensteiner nationality (he starts with Kosovo nationality), and he'll be the reserve of Andreas Malin, as left DC.

Europa League started with 2nd qualification round for us, where we were drawn against Slovan Bratislava. 2-3 in Bratislava for us, 2-2 at home in Vaduz, and we're going to the 3rd qualification round, where Slavia Praha is waiting for us.

Vaduz chairman sold the team to a new owner, so now unfortunately we have a Swiss president, a Swiss CEO and a Portuguese manager, which crushes with my will of having everyone of Liechtensteiner nationality even in the staff, but I'll ignore it 😀

I'm going to include also screens of the tactics, to can see our starting 11 and the other 15 players, which makes up our 26 players. We got some good regens, especially as DC, which I'm deliberately leaving on our reserves team Vaduz 2, as I want to prioritize the fact of signing real players and staff, leaving regens as last choice, especially on these first years. Last year I've also signed Tim Spycher, Swiss GK from Basel U19, and I'm deliberately leaving him too on our Vaduz 2 team, because after 5 years he will obtain the Liechtensteiner nationality. I'll promote him to the 1st team perhaps when less than 50% of the 5 years time is missing for becoming Liechtensteiner, so to make it the same as I did with Cedric Guesser and Tunahan Çiçek, who are currently awaiting documentation as the 5 years for them are over. Hopefully Benjamin Büchel will keep playing for us at least for other 2 years, as I'm not convinced of playing with either Lo Russo or Foser.

Some news: August has been quite a terrible month, 3 losses and 3 draws, but also 2 fundamental wins in the Europa League playoff, that allowed us to partecipate on it. EL which changed format as how it's expected to do on 2024/25 season. We reached the championship act of Europa League, where we'll play 8 matches, against Getafe, Atalanta, Besiktas, BATE Borisov, Tottenham, Sporting CP, SK Rapid Vienna and Hearts of Midlothian. So far, we unexpectedly won 5-0 against Getafe, and then lost 3-1 against Atalanta. In the Swiss Super League we're struggling a bit to be as much competitive as we was on the last season. We're actually on 4th position, after 9 matches, -8 from Zürich on 1st position. Dejan Djokic is always scoring, his goals made us won again St. Gallen, Winterthur and Lausanne-Sport, and vs Getafe he scored an hat-trick. Hope to find time in this weekend to perhaps even end this session, as the team keeps showing lot of potential. I'd be proud of my players if we could reach even just the round of 16 in Europa League, and then happily get eliminated because the gap is still simply huge compared to several top teams. In the Swiss Super League, I feel we could max end 3rd like last year, or perhaps 4th-5th, as it looks a bit harder this season, but as well I think that with some luck and some consecutive wins, combined with Dejan Djokic's goals, we may be as well an outside for the final 1st place

Fresh updates: we managed to do good on the Europa League championship stage, ending 21th and therefore qualified for the playoffs, where we challenged again SK Rapid Wien, which we beaten on home match, and drawn in the away return match. Super achievement, we managed to qualify for the round of 16, where we'll play 2 matches agains Fenerbahçe, probably our run will end here, but perhaps our Liechtensteiner players will surprise us again.

Like Dejan Djokic, simply unstoppable, leader on EL with 13 goals and as well on Super League with 26 goals, this challenge is being almost doable mostly thanks to his goals.

Swiss Super League which we're ruling as well, the regular season will split in two after 33 matches and, with 24 games already played, we're actually 1st, +2 over the champions since 2 seasons of Young Boys and +7 over Basel on 3rd position. This season is getting so good and I really hope we can win something else besides the Active-Cup, where we'll face Triesenberg in the semifinals, while our 2nd team will play against Eschen/Mauren in the other semifinals.

Looking towards the future, I signed several young players for Vaduz 2, to make them get the Liechtenstein nationality after 5 years, and perhaps making them join the 1st team after more than 50% of that time is passed. Besides Tim Spycher (GK), which I already said before, I signed also Johannes Schenk (GK), Mark Mihaljevic (GK), Dejan Radonjic (DC), Keeto Thermoncy (DC), Samuele Tomeo (DL), Bennett Gasser (DR), Demir Xhemalija (DM), Doron Lichtenstein (DM), Luka Izderic (MC), Arlet Junior Ze (AM L), Riccardo Braschi (ST) and Nil Dimitri Münger (ST), sending almost everyone of them in long loan to other Liechtensteiner teams. This for have alternatives for the future, once some of our aged players will retire, as I would love to avoid using regens and use only real players.

More updates to come hopefully between today and tomorrow 🙂

Here we are, 3rd season completed, with some big news.

Let's start from the most obvious one, we're champions of Liechtenstein Aktiv-Cup, 51th consecutive win, we won against Vaduz 2 🙂

We did absolutely great in Europa League, eliminating Fenerbahçe in the round of 16, winning 4-2 at home and losing 1-0 away. More glory for us? Not really, here again comes an Italian team teaching us what football is, and once again is Atalanta to win against us. 0-1 in Vaduz, 6-0 in Bergamo, we haven't been able to score a single goal against them, and they scored a total of 7 goals in 2 matches against us. So our run ends in the quarter finals, which it's already such a great achievement, that keeps making us improve year after year.

Swiss Super League? Here comes the success: we arrived 1st after the regular reason ended, and then it got split in two. In our half, we managed to again do good and we finished 1st again. We have again rewritten the history of FC Vaduz, first time that a Liechtensteiner team wins the Super League!

Now, as we basically are eternal winners in the Liechtenstein Aktiv-Cup, and we did the highest we could in the Challenge League and in the Super League, there's just one “little” thing missing in this challenge. Some European glory. And here the challenge gets close to be impossible.

But, perhaps with some more luck in the draws, trying to avoid playing against Italian teams as we clearly didn't competed so far with them, who knows.

I'd give it other 2-3 seasons max to see if we can do it, before ending the challenge. Perhaps concentrating all the energies on Europa League and not caring about the Swiss Super League. I got as well the message regarding the updated UEFA coefficients for the European club competitions, so I can share them now, showing how much we improved Liechtenstein within UEFA club competitions. We'll see if we can bring a European cup to the banks of the Rhine 🙂