Last 17 September, in the match against FC Lausanne, Renato Steffen suffered a bad rib injury that forced him to stay in the box for more than two months. A complex period for those who live from the pitch and the ball. You watch your teammates from the outside, training session after training session, without being able to be part of the action.
At the end of October, however, an episode gave a different direction to those weeks of stop. During the first team's visit to the building site of the new AIL Arena - which is entering its final stages of construction - Steffen found himself in front of a familiar scene. The working environment, the still rough spaces, the atmosphere of the construction site brought back to his mind a chapter of his life that predates professional football: at the age of fifteen, before contracts and stadium lights, Renato worked as a painter.
That entry into the construction site brought back a part of his personal history. During the period in which he was out of action due to injury, the HCL outfielder thus chose to dedicate one of his free days to an unusual activity for an athlete of his calibre: to personally contribute to the whitewashing of the new AIL Arena. It was a choice that came about after his visit at the end of October, when Steffen expressed his desire to get his hands 'dirty' again, as in the days when his job as a painter had taught him discipline, responsibility and the awareness that nothing comes without effort.
The club welcomed his proposal, recognising in the player's willingness a gesture of attachment and belonging.
In the corridors of the new Arena, paintbrush in hand, the footballer recalled how that trade he learnt at a very young age had shaped his character. The stories of his adolescence reveal the boy he was: physically petite, struggling to carry twenty-kilo buckets on building sites, exhausted to the limits at the end of the working day. It was hard work, but it taught him to endure, to organise himself and to complete each task with precision. Those very values,' he explained, 'are the same ones he applies today in professional football: autonomy, the ability to take responsibility, the awareness that 'nothing is given away'.
While he was applying paint on the walls of the new stadium, Steffen joked that it would be useful to have other comrades with him who are used to manual trades. He quoted Amir Saipi - a bricklayer by training - who is familiar with the drudgery of construction work, and mentioned the working-class mentality of teammates like Uran Bislimi and Lukas Mai, players who show the same habit of sacrifice on the field that it would take to complete a construction job.
The day ended with a simple but meaningful gesture: the signature left on a freshly painted wall, a symbol of his participation in the project. Steffen explained with a smile that that signature will serve as a reminder to his comrades that he was there, that he helped prepare their new home. A reminder for those who will enter that space in the coming months: the infrastructure is of an absolute standard and only hard work, dedication and responsibility will count inside.