How the Switzerland National Football Team Became Successful

Switzerland national football team

The Switzerland national football team is a good team. They have averaged a ranking of 29th in the world after peaking as high as third in the world in 1993, and as low as 83rd in the world in 1998. You can check out the current Switzerland national football team world ranking here.

Switzerland’s average ranking means they’ve always been good enough to be of World Cup quality under the 32-team World Cup format. In the decade leading to the 2022 Qatar World Cup, they’ve peaked as high as #8 in the world multiple times which shows how remarkably consistent they have been in recent history. 

I have to admit, Switzerland’s ranking even surprised me. The Switzerland national football team is largely unheralded but their understated footballing existence means that they’re bound to fly under the radar and cause an upset or two.

In the earlier days of the World Cup they qualified for the quarter-finals in 1934, 1938 and 1954. At the 1994, 2006, 2014 and 2018 World Cups they made the Round of 16.

In more recent times, they knocked out reigning world champions France at Euro 2020 with one of the most stunning comebacks. They also directly qualified for the 2022 World Cup ahead of Italy, who failed to make the World Cup altogether after being knocked out by North Macedonia in the playoffs. 

Around 80% of the Switzerland national football team players play their football outside of Switzerland which is no surprise. What’s extremely interesting is just how much the Swiss national team has benefited from immigration.

In 1994 when Switzerland qualified for the World Cup, all their players were born in Switzerland. Remember in 1998? They were ranked at their lowest ever in their history, 83rd in the world. An obvious state of decline was happening.

The Swiss would have to wait until the 2006 World Cup to qualify for the tournament again. By this time, half the team was made up of first or second generation immigrants. In 2018, 8 of their 23 squad members were born outside Switzerland, the most foreign born players of any team at Russia 2018. 

There is no greater example of how immigration has benefited the Switzerland national football team than in the FIFA U17 World Cup. Switzerland stunned everybody and won the tournament. Striker Haris Seferovic was the equal top scorer in the tournament. His family is from Bosnia and Herzegovina and immigrated to Switzerland in the late 1980s. 

Star Granit Xhaka was part of the team and scored in the tournament. His family are ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Fellow Swiss teammate Xherdan Shaqiri was born in Yugoslavia and also has Kosovar Albanian parents.

Shaqiri just missed out on playing at the U17 World Cup in 2009 as he was too old. Xhaka’s U17 teammate and star left back Ricardo Rodriguez has a Spanish father and Chilean mother of Basque heritage. 

The 2009 U17 Swiss team was captained by Frederic Veseli who interestingly went on to represent Albania internationally. Another player that played in the Swiss U17 World Cup winning team is Sead Hajrovic who switched allegiance to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Midfielder Charyl Chappuis has since gone on to play for Thailand.

The U17 World Cup winning team also included Bruno Martignoni who has Italian heritage, Kofi Nimeley who was born in Ghana, Pajtim Kasami who has Albanian parents and Nassim Ben Khalifa with Tunisian roots. 

It’s a feel good story for the Switzerland national football team, having the ability to bring cultures together and also to help the Swiss football team remain highly competitive in international football. Multiculturalism is what made Switzerland a footballing success in recent times. 

It reminds me of my national team, Australia, who had one of the greatest golden generations that never won a World Cup, driven by immigrants with Croatian, German and even Samoan roots in the team. Those players are even represented in the best Australian football players of all time. 

Socially in Switzerland the picture on immigration isn’t as glamorous as the Switzerland national football team U17 World Cup win in 2009. In 2014 and by the finest of margins, an initiative “against mass immigration” was passed in a referendum which was aimed at putting a cap on the number of immigrants arriving each year.

This is a country that has relied on immigration since the 1960s to transform what was a country that relied largely on subsistence farming, into one of the most economically prosperous in the world. 

A quarter of Switzerland, like Australia, is born overseas, which is the most you’ll find in the western world. A whopping 20% of the Swiss population has Italian, German, Yugoslav, Albanian, Portuguese or Turkish heritage. That’s more than double of France’s 9.1% immigrant population when they won the World Cup in 2018.

Whatever the future holds for Switzerland, and whether there is a cap on immigrant numbers, you can be sure that Switzerland national football team players will be made up of many players with ethnic roots.

No matter how far left or right you are politically on the issue of immigration, there is no doubt that it’s helped transform the Swiss into a European powerhouse of football.