goal.com, 16.08.2010
Goal.com Interview: Meet Scott Sutter, the Tottenham fan intent on wrecking Spurs' Champions League dream with Young BoysEnglish-born full-back believes artificial pitch can make the difference...
In the glamour-fuelled Premier League age, English footballers playing abroad are collector’s items.
Even rarer are those who cut the umbilical cord to friends, family, language and culture at 16 and take a punt on foreign currency.
Scott Sutter was enough of a Europhile – and courageous enough – to cut his ties to England in his teens and has spent the last eight years forging an unheralded, but impressive, career in Switzerland, the land of his father’s birth.
Now is his chance for the limelight. The pairing of the right-back’s BSC Young Boys team with Tottenham, the club where he used to have a season ticket as a boy, in the Champions League qualifiers has made him the focus of attention both in England and in his adopted homeland.
“I have had a lot of attention since the draw, which I’ve quite enjoyed,” Sutter told Goal.com UK. “There have been a lot of interview requests, I am now on the radar with the media and this gives me a great stage to show what I can do. I can’t wait for the matches now.”
Born in London to an English mother and Swiss father, Sutter had spells in the youth set-ups at Millwall, Barnet, Aston Villa and Charlton Athletic before opting to accept a contract with Grasshoppers Zurich as a 16-year-old in 2002.
Gap years abroad are a rite of passage for British students but they do not tend to form part of the education of footballers from these shores.
“Because young players know how much money is involved in England, everyone grows up with the dream of playing in the Premier League,” Sutter explained. “That’s why few players make the move, as well as missing family and friends, and the language barrier.
“I made the move because I wanted to do something different. I wanted to learn the technical side of the game and there was a huge emphasis on this in the training sessions at Grasshoppers at the time.
"They had two Dutch coaches, Ricardo Moniz and [former Liverpool Academy Director] Piet Hamburg, who offered me a contract before I finished school.
“Because they came from Ajax, the training was technical-based. I remember going there when I was 14 and being the best player. Two years later they had improved and the defenders were doing as many step-overs as the attackers.”
It is to Sutter’s credit that he swam rather than sank after forgoing the opportunity to make his way in the infested Premier League goldfish bowl.
He said: “The first year was difficult. I had just turned 16, I had a girlfriend in England and I couldn’t speak the language. I thought: ‘If I don’t make it as a footballer, at least I will have learned something as a person’. Cooking for myself and washing my own clothes at a young age helped me grow up quicker.
“In the past eight years Switzerland has become my home. It is a beautiful country and a really nice place to live. Everything is so clean and organised.”
Promoted from Grasshoppers’ youth set-up into the first team at 18, Sutter spent four seasons in the first team as an adventurous right-back and his smooth progress began to attract interest from some leading European clubs, including Aston Villa and Strasbourg.
But then he sustained ankle cartilage damage in a pre-season friendly against the Oman national team in June 2007. It kept him sidelined for 19 months and the damage to his career was almost terminal.
“The first thing the specialist said to me after seeing my ankle was, ‘Have you made enough money from football?’ He said there was an eight or nine out of ten chance that my career was over.
"I had the same guy who operated on Cristiano Ronaldo’s ankle. He had to drill holes into the bone marrow to repair the cartilage. It was the worst time of my life. From one day to the next, I never knew if I was going to be okay.”
The injury brought pain and heartache but gave Sutter something of great worth – perspective. “It takes something like that to see things more clearly,” he said. “Now I can enjoy football more. I think every day about that injury. When I wake up in the morning it is stiff and it takes five minutes of warm-ups to feel right. It will never be the same again.
When the injury was healed, Grasshoppers had lost faith but Sutter’s reputation was such that Young Boys offered him a three-year contract. It has paid off.
He has established himself as a first-team regular in the side that has beaten Athletic Bilbao and Fenerbahce in European competition over the past two seasons and he will now take on the team that he used to watch from the terraces in the days of Juergen Klinsmann, Teddy Sheringham and David Ginola.
“I’m extremely excited. When I heard the draw I was punching the air,” said Sutter. “I knew beforehand there was a 20 per cent chance we could play Tottenham but you think it will never happen. It was even more special that we were the first names out of the hat.
“My dream is to be fit for the second leg at White Hart Lane. I’m looking forward to training on the pitch the day before the game and going through the gates where I used to stand and get autographs.”
Sutter admits it would be an “upset” if Young Boys overturned the Londoners but they possess a useful weapon in the shape of an artificial pitch that will conjure nightmare memories for Peter Crouch, who was involved in England’s defeat to Russia three years ago on another synthetic surface.
He observed: “I would be lying if I said it was not an advantage. The Astroturf plays really quickly when it’s wet but when the weather’s dry, it’s a nightmare.
"I think it is our secret weapon. We train on it every day at the stadium so we are used to it. We have a chance against any team at home.
"Last season, we only lost one game at home and it was a similar story the previous season.”
Sutter picks out Luka Modric (“a little wizard”), Gareth Bale (“he had a great season last year”) and Crouch (“a bit of a handful”) as Tottenham’s dangermen.
The adopted Swiss is looking forward to establishing his credentials to English eyes. Although he has played for Switzerland at under-21 level, he has dual nationality and is keeping open his options about his international pathway.
“I said when I turned 21 I didn’t want to play for Switzerland. I always consider myself English. I grew up there, had my education there and all my friends are there. But if the chance came to play for Switzerland now, I wouldn’t turn it down.
“My long-term dream is to play in England. When I compare myself to players in my position in England, I don’t see anyone better. Obviously, you need a bit of luck and to play well against Spurs would help my cause.”
Few would deny him the chance to gatecrash Tottenham's party.
http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2914/champions-league/2010/08/16/2073453/goalcom-interview-meet-scott-sutter-the-tottenham-fan-intent
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