…Graubünden hates you more than you will know

As the words of Simon and Garfunkel echo through your ears, let me preface by saying that I wouldn’t normally write like this, but I cannot sit and watch as this witch hunt continues…

There are seasons that end with applause, and others that end with an argument. Chur’s first year in the third tier should, by any reasonable measure, have belonged firmly to the former. Instead, as the final whistle of the campaign faded, the noise that followed did not come from the stands but from above them. A steady stream of boardroom briefings, national media contacts – “Chur have failed at their goal, where does Arriola stand long term?” etc – pointed remarks and carefully placed media reactions – honestly, which owners storm press conferences and make these comments? – after every narrow defeat or imperfect performance has created a tension that now hangs heavier than the league table ever did. What should have been a period of quiet reflection has become something more brittle, more public, and far less dignified.

At the centre of it all sits Simon Hofer – the club president – a name that now provokes an eye-roll in the terraces and a tightening of jaws among supporters who feel their club is being talked down rather than built up. He’s not a local but his business interests in the area gave him the pole position in his election race. He doesn’t get this part of the world. Each intervention, each public airing of dissatisfaction, has chipped away at the sense of collective achievement that defined the season on the pitch. Where fans saw a team growing into its level, learning the rhythms of a higher division and competing with courage, the board’s tone suggested something closer to irritation, even impatience. The disconnect has been impossible to ignore.

What has emerged, almost instinctively, is a closing of ranks. The majority of the fanbase has aligned itself with Inaki Arriola, not out of blind loyalty, but because his work has felt honest, coherent and rooted in the realities of where Chur are and what they can be. Against that backdrop, the board’s public posture has begun to feel like an unwanted counter-melody, out of step with the song being sung on the terraces. This article begins there – not with results or numbers, but with the growing sense that, just as Chur found its footing on the field, something off it has begun to pull in the opposite direction.

What followed on the pitch, however, made the off-field noise feel increasingly misplaced. Chur did not merely survive their debut season at this level; they shaped it. Third place (click mini table to see the full run down), nine points shy of champions Paradiso and just a single point behind Delemont, was the product of consistency rather than streakiness. Seventeen wins, twelve draws and only five defeats formed the strongest defensive record of resilience in the league, with no side losing fewer matches across the campaign. In a division often decided by volatility, Chur became stubbornly reliable.

That reliability was paired with ambition. Sixty-five goals made them the league’s second top scorers, just one behind Rotkreuz, while conceding only thirty-four – again second best, again separated by the narrowest of margins. The underlying numbers reinforced the impression of a side that imposed itself rather than reacted. Chur recorded the highest non-penalty expected goals figure in the league at 1.74 per game, took more shots than anyone else with a staggering 552 efforts, and hit the target 257 times. These were not sterile possessions or speculative efforts either. Despite ranking just tenth for final third passes, Chur were ruthless in how they turned territory into threat, averaging roughly five final-third entries per shot and ten per shot on target. When they broke lines, they did so with purpose.

Physically, the team set the standard. No side came close to matching their intensity, with 4,134 sprints across the season – more than six hundred clear of the next best. That energy was not chaotic. Chur were second only in dribbles per game at 18.47, using ball carrying as a tool to destabilise rather than inflate possession figures. Opponents struggled to build any rhythm against them, reflected in the league-low number of passes attempted against Chur. Even when pressed deeper, Arriola’s side were selective in engagement, ranking eighth for opposition passes per defensive action and defending from a slightly lower line that funnelled play into predictable zones. The result was control without suffocation: opponents were restricted to one shot on target, on average, for every nineteen entries into Chur’s final third.

At the sharp end, Dion Cakolli became the most obvious reference point, and inevitably the most debated. His 21 goals, almost perfectly aligned with his 19.75 expected goals, came at a rate of one every 102 minutes and crowned him league top scorer. Yet the attack was never just about him. Andrea Favara’s emergence added a relentless vertical dimension, his 21 sprints per ninety – more than four clear of the next best – stretching games even when space was limited. Wing back Alexandre Vayvendaz and number 10 Nino Weibel also featured among the league’s elite for high-intensity running, underlining how collective the physical burden was.

Creatively, the numbers tell a story of opportunity rather than excess. Matteo Gambardella and Favara finished joint ninth in the assist charts with nine each, but Gambardella’s underlying influence was unmatched. His 11.14 expected assists from open play led the league, a reflection of repeated chance creation rather than fortunate outcomes. Nico Ruffieux operated as the connective tissue, registering 3.30 key passes per ninety – third best overall – and creating 26 chances in total, a league-leading rate of 1.26 per game. Sadly, a sale to St Gallen means that he’ll not be with the club next season. Out wide, Vayvendaz redefined the wing-back role, completing 2.62 open-play crosses per ninety from an extraordinary 11.71 attempts. No one else came close, and six assists followed from that stream of delivery alone.

Defensively, the profile was just as distinctive. Guillem Badia’s seven key tackles – one every four games – spoke to timing rather than volume, while Sonny Henchoz anchored the back line with a different kind of authority. His 28 shots blocked, averaging 0.82 per ninety, dwarfed his tackling numbers and reflected a defender who prioritised space, angles and consequence over aggression. It was an approach that suited Chur’s broader defensive identity: absorb, delay, disrupt, and then break.

In the end, the season leaves Chur suspended between two very different readings of the same year. On the pitch, Arriola has overseen a side that is physically dominant, tactically coherent and statistically among the strongest in the division, finishing third with the profile of a team that could reasonably aspire to more. Off it, the narrative has been clouded by public unease and boardroom interventions that have reframed progress as something to be questioned rather than built upon. What the summer now holds for Inaki Arriola is not just a recruitment challenge, but a political one: whether he is allowed the stability to refine a clearly defined model, or asked to justify success that already speaks loudly enough in the data and in the stands.