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The SCB is in crisis, it has lost eight of the eleven games. There is no lack of will. Rather, on a plan. The team remembers a school class playing a new game in gym lessons. Everyone is fine. But nobody understands the game.
“Now something has to happen,” sporting director Florence Schelling told BLICK after Bern took a 3-0 lead at Ambri on Friday. “Yes, something has to happen now,” the same sporting director said after Saturday’s fifth consecutive bankruptcy against Langnau (1: 2) to MySports. Nobody is satisfied. Something really has to happen now. “The reporter asks, do you want to know what is supposed to happen?” Good question. Now something has to happen, ”Schelling replies, as if waiting for a miracle.
The 31-year-old has been in office for 221 days. She was not the first choice. The club wanted its former captain Martin Plüss. But he turned down the offer and now works as a performance coach. Schelling’s engagement caused a sensation around the world. Very few people know that Christine Wellenreiter, a woman from the NLB near Grindelwald, served as sports director 30 years ago.
Doubts about the coach before the start of the season
Schelling, who still has to undergo therapy twice a week after his ski accident, rushes from interview to interview, rarely present for the first few months, and often communicates with team and coach by mail electronic. To this day, it remains difficult to get there, and not just for agents.
The team, still good enough to play in the front half of the table, assembled Schelling’s predecessor Alex Chatelain, master builder of three championship titles. Schelling was unable to transfer players. The fact that Bern only works with two foreign strikers is due to the Corona crisis.
But the sports manager opted for coach Don Nachbaur, whom hardly anyone knew, after filling out a catalog of 60 questions with the Austrian-Canadian. Schelling even managed to get CEO Marc Lüthi, who always insisted on concluding one-year contracts, equate Nachbaur with a contract until 2022.
Doubts arise even before the start of the season. The aftershocks are said to not only have technical deficits. Already in the first training session he puts his new assistant Alex Reinhard at the head of the assembled team and then apologizes to the team. Schelling will soon also express concern, says one player, that next season there will be a new coach anyway.
The cooperation between the sporting director and the coach has long since cracked. A player is sent to the Swiss League. Management doesn’t want it, explains the coach. The coach doesn’t want it, says the athletic director. There has been no contact with the player to this day, although he remains under contract with the SCB.
The coach and sports manager missed the opportunity to re-generate positive energy after last season’s miserable. Nachbaur recently spoke of a lack of pride, which causes irritation. At the same time, he let star defender Calle Andersson sneak into the stands twice in a row. Unsuccessfully. “I’ll talk to Schelling now about which player will be fired on Tuesday,” he says. And he adds: “Now it’s up to the veterans to get up.” In response to the observation that the veterans themselves are currently out of shape, Nachbaur says, “Then the guys have to get up.”
No money for change
Bern now depends on this helpless duo. There is no exit strategy. Lars Leuenberger, who could have been promoted to head coach and knows the club from the inside out, but who also dared to use a critical tone, was allowed to pass to Biel.
CEO Marc Lüthi says: “We just don’t have the money to change anything. The team has to help themselves and finally stick to the system for 60 minutes. It doesn’t depend on the coach. “
But with more losses, the risk increases that the sponsors and the 10,500 subscription owners, who have paid around 10 million francs, will angrily demand their money at the end of the season.
