International Li Lei will join Grasshopper Zurich in the Swiss Super League after playing the remaining matches in the Chinese Super League this season. In fact, this rumor has spread as early as this summer, and the operation of Li Lei's stay in the ocean is not a matter of one or two days. Today, the secret news takes you to a comprehensive understanding of the situation of the Grasshopper Club Zürich football club in Zurich.
Founded in 1886 by a British student, the Grasshopper Club Zurich was one of the first football teams in Swiss football. Historically, Grasshoppers won the first Swiss Football League in 1898 and has won 27 titles since then, the last in the 2002–03 season. In addition to the too distant years, their intensive period of winning the Swiss league was mainly concentrated in the 1980s-90s. In the 1970s and 1990s, the Zurich Grasshopper has been active in the European Champions Cup, the UEFA Cup, the European Cup Winners' Cup, commonly known as the "Three European Cups" event, and the best result was to reach the top four of the League Cup in 1978. In the 1995–96 season, they also became the first Swiss team to play in the Champions League.
The team's name Grasshopper, grasshopper, has always been a symbol of them, and the club uses the name grasshopper because they want players to be as flexible and energetic as grasshoppers. The team's traditional jersey is a combination of blue and white, which is 1/2 of each, a bit like the former Premier League team Blackburn. Although grasshoppers have a long history in Swiss football, in 2007, because they were preparing for the European Championship football match to be played on their doorstep the following year, grasshoppers promised to demolish their original home stadiums, but since then the new stadium cashed in by the government has not been built, because of the loss of "home", grasshoppers have to send people to the fence to share the stadium with the sworn enemy Zurich in the same city. This has also become a major reason for their decline, and in 2019 they were relegated, and last season they were promoted back to the Swiss Super League, that is, this season's Promotion of the Swiss Super League.
The Grasshopper Club Zurich has also come out of famous stars, the most famous of which should be Sforza. The former Swiss international not only played for Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, but was also a main member of the famous "Kaiserslautern Miracle" in the Bundesliga, and was Kaiser's no. 10 core player at the time. Sforza is the Swiss superstar who came out of the grasshopper.
In addition, the famous manager of the Bundesliga history, Heathfield, also coached Grasshopper twice in the late 1980s and early 1990s to win the Swiss League Championship and Cup. Heathfield is also the most famous manager in grasshopper club history.
This season, the Zurich Grasshoppers are 5th out of 10 teams in the Swiss Premier League. The Swiss Premier League is currently only 14th in European football, belonging to the third-rate european league, last season's league champions Berne Boys finished out of the champions league group stage this season, and another strong team, Basel, participated in the UEFA Cup and has advanced to the knockout stages. But the Zurich grasshopper clearly did not have the strength to participate in the European war.
The total value of the grasshopper team is only 10.48 million euros, of which Japan international Jun Kawabe, who joined this season, is the team's most expensive player, with an estimated value of 1.3 million euros. Since scoring his debut goal last month, Jun Kawabe has scored 3 goals and assisted 1 time in the Swiss Super League, and is currently the team's main midfielder. Currently, there are three other Asian players in the Swiss Premier League, namely Toshiichi Suzuki (Lausanne Sport), Yamato Wakzuki (Sion) and Kempt (St. Gallen). Among them, Philippine naturalized international Kempter also participated in the match with the national football team in the top 40 in June this year, and Li Lei sat on the sidelines and did not appear.
If Li Lei successfully joins grasshopper Zurich, then he will not only be the first Chinese player in the club's history, but also the second Chinese player in the Swiss Premier League after Shi Jun. Shi Jun, a native of Liaoning, played for the Bern Boys and Lucerne club in the Swiss Super League from 2005 to 2008, and was the first Chinese player to land in the Swiss Super League and score a goal. Although grasshopper clubs are only ranked 1363 in the world, European football is also a humble team, but it is very suitable for Chinese players as the first stop in Foreign Europe.