Glorious European nights are set to return to Stamford Bridge, but Chelsea must first bypass the play-off stage before embarking on their 2024/25 Conference League campaign.
A club only recently synonymous with Champions League success will have to come to terms with the reality of playing in UEFA’s newly established competition having been absent from Europe entirely last term.
Thursday nights present Enzo Maresca with an excellent opportunity to appease peripheral members of his ludicrously bloated squad, with the competition serving as a great opening for the Italian to claim silverware in year one.
However, their sixth-place Premier League finish last time out does not guarantee a place in the Conference League proper. In fact, every team must play in the play-off round to book their respective places in the new league phase.
The Blues were drawn against Swiss club Servette and here’s everything you need to know about Chelsea’s upcoming opponents ahead of their two-legged encounter.
Servette is one of Switzerland’s oldest football clubs having been established in 1890 – initially as a rugby club. Located on the outskirts of Geneva and close to the French border, Les Grenats rank among the country’s most successful clubs, too.
They lifted their first national title in 1907 having signed up for the Swiss Serie A at the start of the 20th century. Servette have since claimed 17 league titles with only Grasshoppers (27) and Basel (20) winning more. However, their last title triumph arrived in 1999. They’ve never won the Swiss Super League, formed in 2003, but have once finished runners-up.
In truth, much of Servette’s glory arrived pre-World War II with highs only proving sporadic in the lengthy aftermath.
In addition to their 17 league titles, the Genevans are also eight-time winners of the Swiss Super Cup and a record three-time victors of the Swiss League Cup. Former Borussia Dortmund manager and Servette player Lucien Favre guided the club to their most recent major honour in 2001.
Switzerland’s respectable coefficient ranking and Servette’s moderate success in the Swiss Super League means the club are no strangers to European competition. They’ve competed in Europe eight times this century but are yet to make it past the group stage.
In the 20th century, Servette made 24 appearances in the European Cup/Champions League (including qualifying rounds). Their best European performances were the quarter-final berths they earned in the 1966/67 and 1978/79 European Cup Winners’ Cups.
Their most notable ‘recent’ European campaign arrived in 2001/02 when they reached the fourth round of the UEFA Cup before falling to an excellent Valencia side 5-2 on aggregate. They were involved in last season’s Europe League group stage, facing Jose Mourinho’s Roma, but failed to make the knockout stages and were subsequently knocked out of the Conference League by Viktoria Plzen in the round of 16.
After finishing third in the Swiss Super League last season, Servette advanced into the Europa League qualifying rounds before they were beaten by Braga which has seen them drop down into the Conference League play-offs.
Servette have bounced back from the financial ruin which forced them into bankruptcy in 2005. The issues began when French TV company Canal+ and Didier Piguet brought Paul-Annik Weiller’s stake in the club eight years prior and later sold up in 2002.
Their debts mounted year on year with Piguet being charged with fraud after selling his stake. Players were sold merely to survive, with agent Marc Roger’s grand plan to stabilise the club not coming to fruition. The ambitious Roger sunk the club further into the mire thanks to shoddy recruitment and the former agent’s hope that former Real Madrid president Lorenzo Sanz would invest and bail the club out.
He didn’t.
Chaos and bankruptcy ensued with Servette, who’d enjoyed a 115-year stay in the Swiss top flight, getting chucked out the Super League. They’d restart in the third tier, but any steady progress made was thwarted by another bankruptcy filing in 2012. Following more instability, false dawns, relegations and turbulence, Servette are now in the steady hands of Didier Fischer and the 1890 Foundation.
The club returned to the top flight in 2019 and have worked their way back to the summit of Swiss football once again.
While Servette have enjoyed plenty of historical success, they’ve been bereft of all-time greats. The club had Oliver Neuville and Sonny Anderson on their books as they reclaimed the Swiss title in 1994, while Lucien Favre, who was no outstanding player and better known for his work on the touchline, ranks among the club’s leading appearance makers.
The superb Karl-Heinz Rummenigge spent the last two years of his career with Servette at the end of the 80s, while Christian Karembeu, Martin Chivers and Martin Petrov all enjoyed spells with the Swiss club.
Former Arsenal and Manchester City left-back Gael Clichy may well be their most well-known alumni member of modern times. Clichy joined the Swiss club on a free transfer in 2020, initially signing an 18-month contract, but the Frenchman stayed in Geneva for three years.
Clichy, well into his twilight, made 79 league appearances for the club before calling an end to his career in 2023. Clichy’s former Arsenal teammate, Philippe Senderos, was the sporting director of Servette, his boyhood club, at the time of his arrival.
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