The day began with a fantastic, beautiful train journey alongside Lake Geneva, heading north, via Lausanne and Bern, to the city of Basel, where Swiss, French and German borders all meet.
The pronunciation of the Basel depends on whether you speak German or French, but the city is predominately German speaking.
The pronunciation of the Basel depends on whether you speak German or French, but the city is predominately German speaking.
Football Club Basel 1893 are one of the most successful clubs in Swiss football, having won the Swiss Super League 17 times. Since the millennium, between 2002 and 2014, Basel have won the championship nine times and, for good measure, have also won the Swiss Cup 11 times.
They have competed in European competition every season since 1999/2000, beaten teams such as Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Chelsea, and went as far as the Europa League Semi-Final in 2013.
Basel play their home games at St Jakob Park, which has a capacity of 37,500. It was opened in 2001 and regularly holds Swiss international games (Wales played here in 2010 and England are due to this September). The ground hosted 6 games during Euro 2008, including the tournaments opening game between Switzerland and Czech Republic.
The ground is easily reached by tram from the city centre, where I had parked myself in the splendid Fischerstube for my pre-match beers (for a forthcoming beer festival they have introduced their own take on Scottish beer called Mac-Ueli, which tasted ok) and to shelter from the torrential downpour that hit the city, in which I got absolutely soaked.
Tickets for this game were booked online and printed at home and there was a substantially bigger crowd at this game than there was at Servette. Basel's support base is huge in comparison to other Swiss clubs, though sometimes their fans can overstep the mark and earlier this year the club had to play a Europa League tie behind closed doors due to crowd trouble at a previous game.
There was certainly nothing to get the fans excited tonight and the game was a damp squib, with neither goalkeeper forced into any meaningful action. The only thing Basel goalkeeper Tomáš Vaclík had to do was pick two efforts from St Gallen's Albert Bunjaku, (40 & 44) out of the net. I'm sure former Swansea manager Paulo Sousa would have been disappointed with his charges failure to conjure up any real efforts on goal but, nonetheless, a great away win for St Gallen, their first at Basel since 2002.
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| The jubilant travelling St Gallen supporters |
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