FC Sion

Stade de Tourbillon sits below the medieval castle ruins that give Sion its skyline, and on European nights the ground has produced some of the loudest atmospheres the Swiss top flight has seen from a stadium holding just 14,283. FC Sion have played there since the club's founding in 1909, when the town was still a small cantonal capital in Valais rather than the fixture on the football map it later became.

Two league titles, in 1992 and 1997, sit alongside 13 Swiss Cups, more than any other club in the country, and the 1997 season remains the only time Sion have taken both in the same year. That cup dominance has become the identity: whatever happens in the league, Sion turn up for the Cup.

Much of the modern story runs through Christian Constantin, who took over in 2003 after the club went bankrupt under previous owner Gilbert Kadji and lost its professional licence. Constantin's presidency brought silverware but also chaos: a botched registration of goalkeeper Essam El Hadary triggered a FIFA transfer ban and a 36-point deduction in 2011/12, Sochaux pursued the club over an undeclared debt that led UEFA to hand Sion a two-season European ban and a €235,000 fine in 2018, and in 2017 Constantin was involved in an on-air altercation with a television commentator. Mid-table respectability has rarely been the story at Tourbillon.

Gennaro Gattuso wore the captain's armband there in 2012, Mario Balotelli spent a season in red and white from 2014, and Anton Miranchuk arrived more recently, in 2022. The club's own academy produced Alain Geiger, who went on to captain the Swiss national side, while Jean-Paul Brigger remains Sion's record scorer and Georges Bregy is still remembered locally as the free-kick specialist of his generation. The derby against Servette of Geneva, the Derby du Rhône, remains the fixture Sédunois supporters circle first.

Relegation ended a 17-year run in the top flight in 2023. Sion won the Challenge League the following year and returned to the Super League in 2024, back among the clubs they used to beat regularly in the Cup.