What's UEFA HQ like? In one word: unassuming.
If you're driving between Geneva and Lausanne, the second and fourth largest cities in Switzerland, you might pass through Nyon, or at least see signs for it. Nyon is a small municipality northeast of Geneva, located on the shores of Lake Geneva in the western French-speaking part of Switzerland.
Just over a mile from the “city center,” the road bisects UEFA headquarters and the Colovrey Sports Center. The location belies UEFA's importance and reputation. The men's Champions League and European Championships boast the world's most-watched continental club and international tournaments. Eight of the top 10 men's and six of the top 10 women's FIFA ranking nations are members of the UEFA federation. UEFA has committed to investing more than €1 billion in development projects over the past four years.
These are not the sort of statistics you'd expect from a governing body located at the foot of the Jura mountain range, where Montendre, the highest point in the Swiss Jura, is also the highest mountain in Switzerland outside the Alps, and where vast plains stretch from the mountains to the lake.
View of Lake Geneva from Nyon (Harold Cunningham/Getty Images)
It will be a fantastic backdrop for the UEFA Youth League final, which has been held there every season since its inception in 2013-14, except for last season (2022-23), when it was held in Geneva to meet fan demand. The under-19 version of the Champions League is designed to develop players for the senior competition and close the gap to first-team level. But academy professionalization rates, even at under-19 level, are incredibly low, making it a metaphorical climb.
UEFA was founded in Basel, Switzerland, in June 1954 and had offices in Paris for the first six years before being based in the Swiss capital, Bern, for 35 years before moving to Nyon, 140 kilometers southwest of the country, where staff initially worked in temporary offices while their headquarters were built.
The “campus” currently consists of three modern, minimalist office buildings that don't exactly match. UEFA's “House of European Football” is the main administration building and the oldest of the three, tucked away from the road on the slope down to the lake. Rectangular, mostly glass, with downward-sloping roads on either side. The draws for the continent's club competitions (Champions League, Europa League, Conference League, Youth League) and major international tournaments (European Championship) are held here.
UEFA generally has a low profile in the city (Soeren Stache/Getty Images)
Across the street are two of UEFA's newer buildings: La Clairiere, which opened in 2010, and Bois-Bougy, which opened in 2012. La Clairiere, which means “the meadow” in French, is a circular, four-storey building and is the most visible. Its neighbour, Bois-Bougy, is a long, rectangular building, also with four floors, but set into the ground, with only the top two floors visible.
The building itself has little to no branding, which adds to its mystique, although there is Youth League branding on the lampposts on either side of the street and a small sign reading “The Home of European Football.”
“UEFA's presence in Nyon is a source of pride for our city,” Nyon mayor Daniel Roserat said in 2020. “UEFA is an important employment provider for our region and also has very important economic benefits.” As of the end of 2022, UEFA estimates it will have around 800 employees in Nyon.
UEFA's headquarters in Nyon employs around 800 people (Sören Stasch/Getty Images)
A UEFA official, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect the relationship, said numbers were likely at their peak now because of preparations for the upcoming European Championships.
Colovray Sports Centre is a multi-purpose sports facility with an athletics track and six grass pitches (some with artificial turf) where rugby is also played. Its proximity to the lake and surrounding countryside mean that there isn't much protection from the biting winds that blow across the pitches.
The show pitch has a stand that can accommodate 860 people and a steep grass bank on the other side that can accommodate 4000. When the Youth League semi-finals and finals are played here, fans split up onto either side of the bank depending on their support, which creates a relatively decent atmosphere given the size of the crowd.
Nyon's top football club, Stade Nyonnais, has played its home games here since it opened in 1991. Over the past 30 years the club has alternated between the second and third divisions, although Nyon's rugby club has clearly been the more successful.
UEFA's local football stadium, the Colovray Sports Centre, has a seating capacity of just 860 (Pixsell/MB Media/Getty Images)
Nyon's town centre is on a steep hill and the land UEFA bought to build their headquarters was called “La Colline”. Its most prominent feature is a 13th-century castle, restored in the early 2000s and now a Swiss cultural heritage site.
In terms of population, Nyon is not even in the top 30 Swiss cities (21,192 inhabitants as of the December 2019 census). It has one train station, no metro and 10 bus lines. Lyon in France and Turin in Italy are within two and four hours' drive, respectively. This fits with the trend of important football organisations deliberately locating in (relatively) remote but accessible areas. One UEFA official said life in Nyon is a “change of pace” compared to bigger cities. Some UEFA staff live just a few kilometres across the border in France, where living and property costs are lower.
Nyon Castle was built in 1293 (Getty Images)
The English Football Association built England's national football centre, St George's Park, in the market town of Burton-upon-Trent because it is “at the heart of England, easily accessible from anywhere in the country and highly accessible from many airports”. They were no doubt inspired by the French Football Federation's national centre in Clairefontaine, 50km south-west of Paris, in the middle of the forest of Rambouillet. Italy's national centre, Coverciano, is on the outskirts of Florence.
These may be player training centres rather than administrative bases (the English, French and Italian football associations are all based in the capital), but it's clear that a quiet environment is valued by an organisation that makes key decisions and has to manage 55 member associations. Other major companies also have offices or headquarters in Nyon, such as Swiss luxury watchmaker Hublot, the timekeeping sponsor of the Premier League and Champions League, which has made the official watch of every tournament since the 2008 tournament in Austria and Switzerland, and will also make the official watch of Euro 2024.
To understand Nyon, it needs to be placed in the context of two cities that are roughly equidistant from Nyon (about 25 minutes): Geneva and Lausanne.
Geneva is grand, yet the most compact metropolis in the world. Its wide boulevards, trams running down the middle of them, and skyscrapers standing tall, are artistic yet imposing. Geneva is also home to a number of important features, including being one of the world's financial centers, the self-proclaimed “capital of peace” as it is home to the UN and many Red Cross agencies, and of course, the four Geneva Conventions, international humanitarian law established to establish legal standards for humane treatment in war.
Similarly, Lausanne is the “Olympic Capital” and is home to the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Lausanne is also the annual host of the Athletissima, which was first held in 1977, an elite athletics tournament that is now a regular part of the Diamond League calendar and where three world records have been set.
By comparison, Nyon is home to Switzerland's biggest documentary festival (Visions du Reel) and the Paleo Rock festival every April. In fact, it's one of the least likely places you'd expect to find UEFA, which is probably why executives chose to move their headquarters to Nyon.
Festival-goers gather to see The Chemical Brothers at Paleo in 2011 (Lionel Fursin/Getty Images)
UEFA has a team that plays in the Swiss amateur league and also runs fitness classes. Its corporate five-a-side matches are said to be of a high standard, and Michel Platini, captain of France's 1984 Euro 2007 victory team and UEFA president from January 2007 to December 2015, is rumored to have occasionally played in them.
It's often said that the city comes alive when there's a match, especially a final. It's traditional in Nyon to have a youth league final weekend, with the semi-finals on Friday and the final on Monday, but life remains the same. How busy the city gets depends on which team makes it to the final (this year AC Milan had a passionate following). There's also a sizeable Portuguese immigrant population in southwestern Switzerland, where Benfica and Porto got big support the last time they reached the final. In fact, UEFA officials said the busiest time was when Everton played a pre-season friendly against Stade Nyon last July.
Fans watch Everton's 2023 friendly against Stade Nyon from the banks along the pitch (Tony McArdle/Getty Images)
Perhaps they have been desensitized to a decade of Youth Leagues and even longer UEFA hosting, or perhaps Swiss teams have never performed particularly well: Basel, Zurich, Young Boys and Servette have all played in the competition a combined 15 times, with Basel's best result being a round of 16 exit in 2018.
Nyon's connection with UEFA and the Youth League was perfectly visualized in a car park near the station, where a poster showcasing the four finalist teams was displayed next to an equally large one advertising Stade Nyon's next home game, which was to be played at the weekend. Subdued.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
