Servette FC Before Servette FC became one of the pillars of Swiss football, it did not play football at all for the first decade of its existence. The club was founded in March 1890 in Geneva as a rugby team, taking its name from the city's Servette district. Only as rugby's popularity declined in Switzerland did the club establish a football section, on 17 January 1900, which almost immediately joined the newly formed Swiss Football Association.
The team, known today as Les Grenats (The Garnets) after the colour of its jerseys, quickly became one of the country's most decorated clubs. Servette have won 17 Swiss league championships and 8 Swiss Cups, making them the most successful club in French-speaking Switzerland. A particularly striking episode in Servette's history came in 1930, when the club, having just won the championship, organised the Coupe des Nations in Geneva — an international tournament conceived as a European counterpart to the very first World Cup, held that same summer in Uruguay. The event coincided with the opening of the club's new ground, Stade des Charmilles, which would remain Servette's home for over seventy years.
One of the finest moments in the club's history came in the 1978–79 season, when the team led by Umberto Barberis and Claude "Didi" Andrey swept every domestic trophy on offer — the championship, the Swiss Cup, and the League Cup — while reaching the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners' Cup.
Servette's most recent Swiss title came in 1999, after which the club entered a turbulent period of financial trouble that culminated in bankruptcy and relegation to the Swiss third division in the 2004–05 season. After years of rebuilding, the club returned to the top flight in 2011. Since 2003, Servette have played their home matches at the modern Stade de Genève, which holds more than 30,000 spectators, carrying forward the tradition of one of the oldest and most recognisable clubs in the history of Swiss football.
