Alain Sutter (born 22 January 1968) is a Swiss former professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who played as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

. He is currently the

sporting director A sporting director, or director of sport, is an executive management position in a sports club. The role is well known as a manager role for European football clubs, which are sometime also "sports clubs", offering many types of sports. The sport ...

FC St. Gallen Fussballclub St. Gallen 1879, commonly known as St. Gallen, is a Swiss professional football club based in the city of St. Gallen, Canton of St. Gallen. As of the 2022–23 season, the team competes in the Swiss Super League. History Founde ...

Playing career

Born in Bern, Sutter played youth football for SC Bümpliz 78, before beginning his professional career in 1985 with

Grasshoppers Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshop ...

, one of Switzerland's most storied clubs. After spending the 1987–88 season on loan at BSC Young Boys, he was ready to take his place in the Grasshoppers first team, where he remained until the 1993–94 season, when he decided to move to Germany to play with 1. FC Nürnberg. After Sutter's impressive performances during the

1994 FIFA World Cup The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the country. The United States ...

, Germany's most successful club, Bayern Munich, quickly signed the midfielder where he played for one season, before moving again this time to

SC Freiburg Sport-Club Freiburg e.V., commonly known as SC Freiburg () or just Freiburg, is a German football club, based in the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg. It plays in the Bundesliga, having been promoted as champions from the 2. Bund ...

. In 1997, he transferred to Major League Soccer in the United States, where he signed for the Dallas Burn (now

FC Dallas FC Dallas is an American professional soccer club based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The club competes as a member of the Western Conference in Major League Soccer (MLS). The franchise began play in 1996 as a charter club of the le ...

). He played one season in Dallas but his tenure there was cut short when, during training in early 1998, he stepped awkwardly in a hole of the practice field (the Burn was using the facilities of a high school at that time) and the injury forced him to retire. He ended his career with 68

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and five goals for the Swiss national team.

Retirement

Sutter was a football expert and commentator for Swiss television from 1998 to 2017. He became the

on 3 January 2018.

Controversies

Sutter was the main force behind a controversy in 1995. Before an important match for the Swiss team, he unfolded a banner to protest against France testing the atom bomb.

Honours

Grasshoppers * Swiss Championship: 1989–90,

1990–91 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 '' Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since t ...

* Swiss Cup: 1988–89, 1989–90 * Swiss Super Cup: 1989 Bayern Munich *

UEFA Cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, clay ...

: 1995–96

Published works

* *

References

External links

* * 1968 births Living people Swiss-French people Footballers from Bern Swiss footballers Association football midfielders Switzerland international footballers 1994 FIFA World Cup players UEFA Cup winning players Major League Soccer All-Stars 1. FC Nürnberg players FC Bayern Munich footballers SC Freiburg players FC Dallas players Grasshopper Club Zürich players BSC Young Boys players Swiss Super League players Bundesliga players Major League Soccer players Swiss expatriate footballers Swiss expatriate sportspeople in Germany Expatriate footballers in Germany Swiss expatriate sportspeople in the United States Expatriate soccer players in the United States {{Switzerland-footy-midfielder-stub