Three-way tie at football summit
St Gallen, Lausanne and Grasshoppers Zurich are all level on points at the top of the Swiss football league table, following another weekend of tight competition.
Grasshoppers joined the log-jam at the summit on Sunday after coming away from Lugano with a goal-less draw. The result leaves winter champions Lugano still looking for their first win of the championship round.
The Ticinese team enjoyed the best chance of the match when they were awarded a penalty near the end of the first half. Kubilay Türkyilmaz stepped up to the spot, only to see his shot saved by Grasshoppers’ substitute goalkeeper Peter Jehle.
The 19-year-old Liechtenstein international had come on in the 16th minute after Grasshoppers’ regular keeper Stefan Huber had left the field with a suspected torn ligament.
After the break it was Lugano goalkeeper Stefan Razzetti who came under most fire. Swiss international Stéphane Chapuisat blasted a free-kick narrowly wide just four minutes after the restart, but the Zurich club’s biggest chance came in the dying seconds of the match.
Latching on to a ball from his Senegalese compatriot, Papa Bouba Diop, Grasshoppers’ Henri Camara found himself just a metre from the Lugano goal, but the 23-year-old striker was unable to squeeze the ball past Razzetti.
Grasshoppers’ cross-city rivals, FC Zurich, could also manage only a goal-less draw on Sunday in their match at home to Basel. The shared points lifted Gilbert Gress’s side into fourth place, just two points behind the leading pack, while Basel climbed off the bottom and into sixth place.
The incredible tightness of this season’s championship round had already been demonstrated on Saturday when the bottom side, Sion, beat league leaders St Gallen 2-1. Following the weekend’s results, which also included a 2-1 win for Lausanne over Servette, there are now just three points dividing St Gallen from Sion.
To make matters tighter still, Sion and Servette still have a game in hand on the teams above them.
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