Key Highlights
- We've taken a closer look at our upcoming UEFA Europa League opponents ahead of our home match this Thursday (21:00 CET)!There have already been some overlaps in personnel with Noah Okafor, whose path from Basel to us Enrique Aguilar is currently following, while Jasper van der Werff and Dimitri Oberlin also played for both teams in the past. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLiverpool, Arsenal or Altach – a club of globetrottersThe Swiss side have a history of regularly developing players to the biggest stage of football.
- Mohamed Salah, Ivan Rakitic, Granit Xhaka, Yann Sommer, Aleksandar Dragovic, and, more recently, Arsenal's Riccardo Calafiori all played for the Red and Blue in the early stages of their careers. Basel's coaches have also repeatedly made a name for themselves, such as Urs Fischer and Marcel Koller.
- However, there is no match for Christian Gross, who was Basel's head coach from 1999 to 2009 (3,668 days!) for a total of 493 matches.
- Incidentally, the current coach was in charge of Altach in the Austrian Bundesliga in 2022: Ludovic Magnin. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFC Basel's undisputed number one status in Switzerland for many years was largely due to strong support from the local business community shortly after the turn of the millennium.
- The close ties to the pharmaceutical giant Novartis – whose headquarters are in Basel – laid the financial foundation for the golden years and countless magical nights at St.