Football champion Lüchinger+Meyer

Once a year, our dealings with architects change from cooperative to confrontational – at the Zurich Architects’ Football Tournament, the big sporting showdown on the Sonnau sports field in Wollishofen. As often before, Lüchinger+Meyer was the only invited engineering team among the 36 participants in the competition.
“This only happens once, it’ll never happen again!” we sang to ourselves with cheerful modesty after the surprising 8:0 start against the team run dma. The result remained the highest-scoring victory of the tournament. Of course, we had no idea what kind of success story this summer afternoon had in store for us. After 5 wins, 2 draws and one defeat (against defending champions Meletta Strebel Architects), we reached the final round as group winners. With a 7:0 win against Joos & Mathys Architects, we laid another foundation stone for the final award of the offensively strongest team with the most goals scored.

After our long tournament history, which goes back to the early days of the tournament, was mostly marked by first-round finishes, hope gradually began to rise that our small but balanced team was called to greater things this year. In fact, under the burning afternoon sun, we managed to beat ALLPLAN (round of 16) and agps (quarter-finals). When LILINer Luft were beaten in a thrilling semi-final, the legendary challenge trophy, the picture of the Maracana stadium by Tobias Madörin, was within reach. The teams from Lüchinger+Meyer and the Canton of Zurich’s structural engineering office met in the final, exhausted by the exertions of a long day of football. Once again, the teams put in their best performances in a competitive match, and in the end, our footballers were able to secure the champion’s title with a final score of 2:1.

We are pleased that, in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, the challenge trophy of the Architects’ Football Tournament will find its place of honour in an engineering office for a year and look forward to defending the title next year with joy and ambition.

Congratulations to our strong and persevering team on their magnificent success! We are extremely proud!