1‑0 against Universitatea Craiova, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
10 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Universitatea Craiova were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
8 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Gaëtan Laborde was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Cedric Rodriguez left the room before anybody could ask which.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Basel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Djibril Freuler has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Level with 94 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Basel had all but put away. Lugano will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Benji Siegrist was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad12 Oct 2026
15 new faces, and Basel are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Basel, and 0 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.96 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 15 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
The words a physio says slowly. 19 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Basel can pretend not to have heard.
Successful dribbles: 30. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Xherdan Shaqiri was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Half the programme played, position 2, 17 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Benji Siegrist is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Gaëtan Laborde is on it.
27 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Basel lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
0‑5. There is a level at which football is played every single week by clubs that have been doing it for fifty years, and an evening like this is what it feels like to arrive there without having done it.
Xherdan Shaqiri and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Braga left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The terraces21 Sep 2026
Basel supporters have found a favourite in Metinho
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Metinho has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Vasilije Janjičić is living that version at Basel, and it tends to show in the first month.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Remo Widmer has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ricardo Rodriguez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Nobody at Basel will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Position 2, 13 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Successful dribbles: 26. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 23 signed and 5 gone
That is the business done at Basel until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Nothing about the week ahead is ordinary. Young Boys on Saturday, a town that has already started talking about it, and a dressing room that does not need telling what it means.
5 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Benji Siegrist is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Basel will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Ibrahim Salah was one of the reasons people came, and $9.3M does not replace that by itself.
Rapid Wien did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $2.6M for Niklas Hedl, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Hakim Guenouche is living that version at Basel, and it tends to show in the first month.
Basel have gone to Thun with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Gaëtan Laborde and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
$13.6M was the most the club would pay and PAOK were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Grasshopper waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Basel is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Basel have gone to Rapid Wien with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Basel have gone to PAOK with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Gaëtan Laborde has, at Basel, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $3.0M has been paid because Gaëtan Laborde is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
Add another name to the list: Grasshopper have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Ibrahim Salah. The answer from Basel has not changed — yet.
Union Berlin paid $1.5M and Basel took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 93th minute. Lugano will replay every second of the added time for a week.
The offer from Luzern for Metinho was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Basel and St. Gallen have settled on $1.3M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Everything agreed with Al-Diriyah, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Basel have gone to Lugano with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Giacomo Koloto did not need any: 7.74, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Basel have gone to Sion with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Basel have gone to Real Madrid with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Karim Onisiwo has just signed for Basel, and for once the answer mattered.
Market3 Aug 2026
Basel may not be able to give Metinho what he wants
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Metinho wants continental football; whether Basel can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Metinho was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
At 18 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.