BERN. Young Boys lost at home for the first time this season, and they lost the match they had been winning. FC Zurich won 5-3 at the Wankdorf on Sunday in front of 29,746 people. Lugano, later, beat Basel 2-1 and stretched the lead at the top of the Super League to nine points. The table on Monday morning has Lugano on 34 points from 12 games, Young Boys on 25, Sion on 23 and Zurich on 20.
The Bern game was an open first half and a Zurich second. Philippe Kény put the visitors ahead from the penalty spot on 12 minutes. Samuel Essende equalised on 22, Umeh Emmanuel restored the Zurich lead on 25, and Essende levelled again on 29. Alvyn Sanches then gave Young Boys a 3-2 lead on 40 minutes, which is how the teams went in. Gerry Seoane’s side had answered every punch. They did not answer the ones after the interval.
How a 3-2 lead became a 3-5 defeat
Livano Comenencia made it 3-3 on the hour. Young Boys spent the rest of the half without the thread of the game, which is the phrase the club itself used afterwards. Marvin Keller saved from Miguel Reichmuth and was beaten by Comenencia. The winner, if a match with eight goals has one, was Selmin Hodza on 82 minutes, finishing the rebound after Keller kept out Lindrit Kamberi’s free kick. Emmanuel, set up by Hodza, added the fifth in added time. Urs Schnyder refereed. Young Boys are next at Luzern on Saturday 7 November at 18:00.
Seoane was back on the touchline after missing the previous week through illness. The team sheet had three changes from the win over St Gallen, with Lewin Blum, Kaly Sène and Dominik Pech in for Stefan Bukinac, Christian Fassnacht and the suspended Edimilson Fernandes. Jaouen Hadjam, the 23 year old who left for Brighton in August, was at the ground before kick-off. None of that survived the second half as the story. The story is a first league defeat, and a lead that was six points on Saturday night and is nine on Monday.
Lugano did less and won, and Thun came back from 1-4
Lugano’s 2-1 against Basel was the opposite kind of afternoon. Daniel Dos Santos scored on 10 minutes and Yanis Cimignani on 26, both past Jonas Omlin at his near post. Philip Otele pulled one back on 37. The home side then sat in, and Basel had about 65 per cent of the ball without a second goal. David von Ballmoos was not seriously tested after the break by anything that went in. Attendance at the AIL Arena was 8,153. It was Lugano’s 11th win in 12 league games, and a 23rd match without defeat across competitions. Saturday had already hinted at the gap, when Lugano were not even playing. Sunday measured it.
In Lausanne, champions Thun won 5-4 after trailing 1-4. The Super League’s Monday table, top to bottom, reads Lugano 34, Young Boys 25, Sion 23, Zurich 20, St Gallen 19, Servette 16, Basel 14, Luzern 13, Thun 13, Vaduz 10, Grasshoppers 10, Lausanne 6. Basel, seventh, are the other club that will feel Sunday in the league and, a few hours earlier, had been the host city of a tennis final. That one went to Valentin Vacherot. The football title race, after 12 rounds, is not a race yet. It is a nine-point procession, unless Zurich’s afternoon in Bern was the start of someone else’s season rather than the end of Young Boys’.