22-game unbeaten run has U.S. billionaire-owned soccer club Lugano aiming for rare Swiss title

GENEVA (AP) — A 22-game unbeaten start to the season has Swiss soccer club Lugano and its billionaire owner from Chicago targeting a first league title since 1949.

The sister club of Chicago Fire, also owned by financier Joe Mansueto , has a claim to being the most in-form in European soccer with 19 wins and just three games tied.

Mansueto was at Lugano’s sold-out, city-owned new stadium Sunday to see a 2-1 win over Basel, the champion of Switzerland in 2025 , that opened a nine-point lead atop the league standings.

“Today I wanted to thank him for everything he has built for the people of Lugano,” coach Mattia Croci-Torti said of Mansueto after the team’s 10th win in 11 league games.

“If today we can experience these emotions and feel a crowd pushing us on even in the toughest moments, it’s because someone had the foresight to believe in all of this,” the coach said.

Croci-Torti got a surprise upgrade to first-team coach within a month of Mansueto buying the club in Switzerland’s Italian-speaking region in August 2021.

That stability, increasingly rare in European soccer, is paying off this season which began in July, four days after the World Cup final, in the qualifying rounds of UEFA’s third-tier Conference League.

Lugano’s Conference League trek saw trips to Kosovo, the Faroe Islands and Georgia — a neutral venue for Maccabi Tel-Aviv’s home games — to reach the main phase where performances have reached a new peak.

Red Star Belgrade, the 1991 European Cup winner, was beaten 3-2 before Lugano went to Madrid and stunned La Liga’s Getafe 5-2.

The heavy schedule of eight European games in midweeks so far, with four more to come before Lugano’s midwinter break in December, is tough on a relatively small squad.

“It’s a performance that fills me with pride,” Croci-Torti said Sunday after beating Basel. “I’d seen the team looking tired in training, because fixtures like those against Getafe and Red Star take their toll.”

Lugano has quality on the field. Defender Hannes Delcroix played at the World Cup in all three games for Haiti, Mattia Zanotti was with Inter Milan when he played in the 2023 Under-20 World Cup final for Italy, and Antonios Papadopoulos joined in 2024 from Borussia Dortmund.

Veteran influence comes from former Switzerland midfielder Renato Steffen and goalkeeper David von Ballmoos, who has played in the Champions League for Young Boys .

Young Boys is the closest challenger and only opponent in the 12-team league to even draw with Lugano this season, though Croci-Torti is cautious about ending the club's 78-season wait for another league title. That would follow Thun's fairytale title win in May.

“It’s only November, anything can still happen,” Croci-Torti said. “What we need to talk about, however, is self-awareness. (Sunday) we showed that we can win even when we’re struggling.”

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