FM10: Official FC Basel Thread - No! We're Not Wearing Barcelona's Kit!

Reserved for future patches/updates.

Reserved for even more future patches/updates if needed.

To start my season I chose the goal of title challenge because of the extra €100k the board gives for that goal.

For day 1 as manager of Basel I had a number of goals:

1) Arrange a friendly between my 1st team and my reserves, which my AssMan was already proposing.

2) Evaluate the staff and make any changes needed. The process of making the following changes was begun:

Mutual Terminations:

Asst. Manager Heiko Vogel

GK Coach Romain Crevoisiser

GK Coach Oliver Stockli

Fitness Coach Nikola Vidovic

Youth Coach David Inguscio

Physio Mark Jager

Scout Rudolf Zbinden

I actually retained a few staff I normally would have terminated in order to avoid having to pay the termination fees. They were adequate at their current positions. And for all contract offers to new personnel I also only looked at people who were unemployed so I wouldn't have to pay their former team for them.

Contract Offers Made:

Asst.Man. Didier Henroid

Scout Franz Roth

Scout Loic Favre

Scout Niclas Jensen

Scout Hans Weiner

Physio Enrico Castellacci

GK Coach Florent Delay

GK Coach Heinz Moser

Fitness Coach Peter Hasler

Coach Emmanuel Xhaka (defending)

Coach Patrick Walker (attacking)

Coach Robert Prosinecki (technique)

Coach Patrick Schneider (decent in multiple areas)

Coach Luis Mangnin (youth)

The board would allow me to hire more staff and I intend to when/if finances improve.

3) Offer contracts/pre contracts to all of the decent youth players so it would be harder for big reputation clubs to steal them, or at least so I'll get paid if they do. Offered contracts to Nimeley, Xhaka, & Cecchini.

4) Attempt to sign players to fill holes discussed in my original post. More on this as they sign.

4) Develop a tactic that would fit my team. I originally intended to use a pre-made tactic off these forums, but decided instead to try to create my own using the wizard and a squad analyzer. More info on this soon.

Are you aware of the ( alleged ) link between the both FCBs ? Can't really tell from your post:)

Wikipedia talks about one of Basel's early captains named Joan Gamper who later founded Barcelona. Is that the link you're referring to?

I've reached the opening game of the 2009/2010 Swiss Superleague season. Here's how the remainder of the offseason went.

1) Once the staff I wanted was in place I turned my sights towards filling holes on the team and strengthening the depth chart. The following transfers were completed:

Transfers In:

DC/DR Marcello Castellini (Free)

DC/DMC/MC Patrick Pothuizen (€30k from NEC Nijmegen)

WB/L Gerardo Bedoya (Free)

MC Randall Azofeifa (€90k from KAA Gent)

DC Mehdi Meniri (Free)

MR/MC Stelios Giannakapoulos (Free)

ST Nassim Akrour (€26k loan from Grenoble with a €130k future option)

DC Pascal Thrier (€35k loan from Lugano with a €90k future option)

Of the above transfers probably the 2 most important are Meniri and Bedoya. Both should see plenty of first team action. There were no outgoing transfers yet. I tried to offload Zanni but had no takers. I do have 2 offers of €500k for Cabral since he's asking for too much money for his next contract.

2) I have a standard set of training regimines that I use in all my saves. So far everyone is training well and most of the team is already in match shape.

3) For the first time since I bought FM I'm trying out my own tactic sets that I created with the in game wizard. I've created defensive, control, and attacking tactics using a 4-4-2 with a target man (Streller). I set my player and position roles fairly basic. The defensive tactic is very rigid and safe. The control tactic uses mostly default options (ex. zonal marking). And the attacking tactic is very fluid and aggressive. With Frei on the team I intend to use the attacking scheme the most. For position roles I setup the following:

DL/DR: Wingers

DC: One ball playing defender, one limited defender

ML/MR: Wide Midfielders

MC: One deep lying playmaker, one ball winning midfielder

ST: One target man, one complete forward (although I might switch to poacher)

I had the team play 3 friendlies using the control tactic. They won 2 games by 2-1 scores and got a draw in the other. I then switched to the attacking tactic for the final 2 friendlies. Basel won those by 6-0 and 4-0 scores.

On to the Superleague and the Euro Cup!

Barca is actually wearing Basel's colors.

Won our first league match. Streller had 2 goals in a 3-1 win.

Great OP gollum

My team in season 3:

GK: Artur Boruc

LB: Arthur Boka

RB: Anthony Vanden Borre

DC: Daniel Van Buyten/Hedwiges Maduro

DC: Johann Djourou

LM: Angel Di Maria/Gäel Kakuta

RM: José Sosa

MC: Gojko Kacar

MC: Abou Diaby

SC: Alex Frei/Eric Hassli

SC: Rafael Sobis

Beat Man Utd in the 1/8 of CL in Season 2.

Nice job Slothuus. I'm still in season one. Will post an update soon. And thanks Joe.

I've reached the end of my first transfer window with Basel so it seemed a good time to post another update. The one major fear I had about this team was what if Frei got hurt, and sure enough he did. On July 6th, after just 4 SL games he went down with a torn up knee. I've reached September 1st and he's almost ready to come back, but the team has had some struggles while he was out, especially Streller.

As it turned out I had a couple of transfers in the works when Frei went down that helped fill the void a bit. Here's a transfer recap:

Remaining Transfers In (not posted above):

ST Edmond T'iamoah - free

ML/C Francois Arona - €24 from Stade Nyonnais

MC Hamed Kavianpour - €130k from Steel Azin

ST Shlomi Arbeitman - €20k loan from Maccabi Haifa with a €240k future clause)

MC/R Kevin Osei - €575k loan from OM with a €1.7M future clause)

Transfers Out:

Cabral - €500k to Grosseto

Frederico Almerares - €600k to Gallipoli

Loaned out Daogari, Cecchini, Shaqiri, & Perovic

Season Recap:

The good news is we accomplished the board goal of making the group round of the EURO Cup. We're in a group with HSV from Germany, Dinamo Bucharest from Romania, & Sivasspor from Turkey. The "experts" say it's a really tough group. I doubt we can beat HSV, but I think we can take down the other two.

In the Swiss Superleague we just suffered our 3rd defeat of the year, losing on a free kick in the 88th minute to Grasshoppers after we had come back from 2-0 down to tie the match. Our first loss was a beating by league leading Young Boys by a 3-0 score. The 2nd loss was a surprising road loss to Bellinzona 2-1. Despite the losses we're in 4th with a record of 4 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw.

Hopefully Frei will come back this week and hopefully the rest of the team will get back on track, especially Streller. It would be nice to make it out of the group round in the EURO Cup at least.

I'll probably post my next update when I get to January, or maybe at the end of the January transfer window.

BTW my intention behind getting all the midfielders was so I could send out Huggel and some of the attacking midfielders as they don't really play roles that I can use very much. When Frei went down I put all plans on hold to send guys out. Once he returns I'll start preparing those guys for the January transfer window.

Anyone else running a Basel save? How's it going?

My team is still fighting our way through the Superleague, the Swiss Cup, and the EURO Cup. We're in the middle of a 7 game unbeaten string. We've surprised in the EC by going 2-0-1 in our first 3 matches and we're all but ensured of making it out of the group stage. And we're through to the round of 16 in the Swiss Cup despite having to start a 16 year old goalkeeper in our last game due to injuries to all my regular keepers.

Great thread, I'm Swiss no it's nice to see some threads for the SuperLeague. I'm thinking about starting a game with Biel-Bienne, where my grandparents live, but they're in the Challenge League.

Looks like you have a nice save going, good luck, never sell Frei <3.

Oh and Shaqiri is a great talent in real life. I don't know how he develops in game but you might want to watch out for him. He was part of the team that won the U17 World Cup in the second half of 09.

Thanks for the comments. It shouldn't be too hard to get Biel-Bienne promoted as the bottom half of the SL seems pretty weak.

I've reached the mid-season break in the SL. It's late December and our next competitive match is on February 7th so everyone is getting a rest. We'll have a few friendlies in January just to keep our fitness up.

It's been an interesting 3 months at St. Jakobspark. Our last loss was on September 12th at Xamax, who scored the game winning goal in added time. Since then, including SL, Swiss Cup, and EURO Cup games Basel has an 18 game unbeaten run going! And yet despite the run we're still 4th in the SL, but we're only 3 points out of 1st now and we're tied with Zurich for 3rd.

The team did make it out of the group stage of the EURO Cup, which is above our expectations. We take on Club Brugge from Belgium in the 1st knockout round. If we get past them (and I think we will) we then have to take on either Villareal or OM which will probably prove to be our exit from the competition.

In the Swiss Cup we've had a pretty easy ride so far. We've beaten Seuzach, Yverdon, Xamax, and Severette FC to make it to the semi-finals, all without allowing a goal against. We take on Scion from the SL in the semi-final, a team that we've beaten once and lost to once. The board expects us to make the final, so we're going to have to find a way to beat them.

The board agreed to give me another €4.9M in transfer funds. The first thing I did was purchase loanee Nassim Akrour from Grenoble for our agreed price of €130k. Despite his age (35) Akrour saved our butts when Frei went down with injury and Streller forgot how to find the net. Akrour has 16 goals, despite only starting 9 games. His heroics alone got us through the early rounds of the EURO Cup.

With the remaining funds I'm trying to get an upgrade to MR and to find a young ST to eventually replace Streller/Akrour. Frei has been good of late, but he's been hot and cold most of the season. He does lead the team with 17 goals, but most of them have come lately, since I changed his role to poacher. According to my squad analyzer his best role is deep lying forward but he didn't do much in the capacity so I started changing the roles. And regarding Streller, he's been good when Frei is on the pitch and pretty terrible when Frei is not. Bad enough that I may sell him in January and find someone else, especially since Akrour is staying permanently.

And yes, Shaqiri does look good. He's currently out on loan to a Belgian club and is playing fairly well for them.

A lot of transfers made in the January transfer window. Here's a recap:

Transfers Out:

Carlitos - €575k to Frankfurt

Marcello Castellini - €8k to Cremonese

Daniel Unal - €650k to Feyenoord

Marco Streller - €2.3M to Torino

Benjamin Huggel -€75k loan to Freiburg with an €825k future fee

I couldn't justify holding on to Streller based on his play and the amount I could get for him. Nobody would take Huggel outright, but I'm hoping Freiburg picks up the future as I have no really use for him unless I change my tactics. I kind of wanted to keep Carlitos as he had played really well, but when we started talking about a contract extension we were very far apart so I decided to let him go.

With all the money we picked up that gave us a lot to spend...

Transfers In:

GK Samir Kouakbi - €85k from OM

ST/Midfielder Luc Castaignos - €2M from Feyenoord

ST Jean-Louis Gillet - €1.1M from Bellinzona

ST Nassim Akrour - €130k from Grenoble

Midfielder Eyal Golasa - €1.3M from Haifa

DC Luke Ayling - €450k from Arsenal

DC Craig Cathcart - €130k loan from Manchester United with a €3.6M future fee

Other then Akrour everyone is 21 years old or younger. Cathcart was the difficult signing. Even though Man. U. was shopping him he refused to consider a straight out contract. At least he agreed to the loan but is still refusing to discuss making it permanent. Hopefully by the end of the year he'll change his mind. I liked the 2 midfielders because they can play all the midfield positions across the pitch. A couple of them have attitude issues which my fans and board didn't like, but hopefully they'll play well and earn fans.

So with those changes we came out of the January break - and promptly lost our 18 game unbeaten streak. And who beat us? Xamax again! Well, at least we can beat them in tournaments. :| After the Xamax loss we got a draw at home against rivals Zurich, tying the match on a goal by Akrour in the 88th minute. The first leg of the first knockout round of the EC at home against Club Brugge is next.

My Basel team has really struggled coming out of the January break. So far we've won 1, lost 4, and drawn 2. We got bounced out of the EC by Club Brugge by 3-2 aggregate. Losing 1-0 at home in the first leg was what killed us.

I've decided to move away from my custom tactics that I designed because I have no idea whether I've designed them well. Since my player's ratings are all pretty low I'm suspecting they're not very good tactics. I'm going to try a 4-3-1-2 tactic I found on this forum that was designed to replicate "Italian Football" and will hopefully get my guys scoring lots of goals. I have to do something or I'll miss out on qualification for Europe altogether and that could put my job in jeopardy.

Why did you add those staff they are teribble and now to my Basel save in my first season I am walking the league and just beat Everton on penalties in Europa League.

Which staff are you referring to? Since switching tactics and formation my team has 3 wins and a draw and has only allowed 1 goal. We're right in the mix now to finish 2nd or 3rd in the SL and still have an outside chance at winning the league. Our next match is against Sion in the Swiss Cup, a team that beat us 4-0 last time we played them, which was what caused me to change tactics.

I have often thought of starting a save as Basel and probably will at some point in the next few weeks. Just thought I would say that this is a wicked club thread, nice job.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

If anyone is curious I'm using the tactic now that Zico10 made and posted (post 29) in this thread: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=192634

I also changed the way I was determining my lineups. When I made my own tactic I chose player roles for each position based on what the players were best at, regardless of how those position roles interacted with each other. The tactic that Zico created (and most other custom tactics I've seen) has pre-set position roles so I've been doing my best to plug players into those positions who are best at those roles. So instead of the player dictating the position roles of the tactic I'm now having the tactic dictate the players based on what roles they fit into. Working pretty well so far. Wish I had made the switch before Club Brugge bounced me from the EC.

Which staff are you referring to? Since switching tactics and formation my team has 3 wins and a draw and has only allowed 1 goal. We're right in the mix now to finish 2nd or 3rd in the SL and still have an outside chance at winning the league. Our next match is against Sion in the Swiss Cup, a team that beat us 4-0 last time we played them, which was what caused me to change tactics.

The ass man, scouts and coaches.

They did fine for me. In the case of some of the scouts they were hired because of where they were good at scouting more then how good they were as scouts.

I've finished my first season at Basel. Some high points, some low. Besides the good performance in the EC discussed earlier I managed to win the Swiss Cup, which guaranteed a return trip to European competition. In the Swiss Superleague we had a bit of a disappointing finish, ending up in 4th place. Combine the 2 and we get a return to the EURO Cup instead of a trip to the Champions League, which is my top goal now for next year.

Our struggles down the stretch in the SL can be traced to injuries and red cards. I seemed like every match over our last 8 we either had a major injury or we were given a red card to a major player early in the match. These factors, especially the red cards, contributed to 3 or 4 losses at least. But with a final record of 18 wins, 11 losses, and 7 draws I guess I can't complain too much.

The Swiss Cup run was very impressive. We outscored our opponents 14-0 in the tournament, including a 2-0 final win over rival Zurich Grasshoppers. The final win was especially impressive since Frei was banned for red cards and we had another red card just 10 minutes into the match, yet we still found a way to not only win but to shut out Grasshoppers. If the team had played that way all league season we would have won it.

On the player front there were a handful of guys who were impressive. Frei finished with 21 goals, 11 in the SL. Marcos Gelabert was a rock in the midfield all year. Behrang Safari led the team with 4 man of the match awards. And Reto Zanni led the team in average rating with 7.10.

I already have a lot of movement setup for the offseason, and depending on my transfer budget there may be more. We'll have to see how it shakes out.

Thanks for reading.

They did fine for me. In the case of some of the scouts they were hired because of where they were good at scouting more then how good they were as scouts.

Most are not in my game, the only coach you listed that is is Robert Prosinecki, and he's atrocious!!

Don't know how to explain that. He's not bad in mine. Some of my guys, including my Ass.Man could be better, and I do intend to try to replace some of them in the offseason. Most notable will be my fitness coaches because I spent the whole season fighting nasty injuries. Part of it too was that a lot of the "good" staff members wouldn't negotiate, or I didn't want to pay fees to other teams to get them. All in all a Swiss Cup win, a 1st knockout round of the EC appearance, and 4th in the SL just 5 points behind the Champions League qualifying spot is pretty good if you ask me, especially if my staff stinks.

What's his stats then? In mine his determination is 8, discipline is 4 and motivation is 5 haha. Not the best

In mine he has determination 10, discipline 12, and motivation 14. But I hired him for working with youngsters 17, technical 19, and man management 16. Our ratings are probably different based on what difficulty level we chose when we started our saves. I think I set mine to professional footballer when I started this one.

I have already replaced my AssMan with Austrian Johann Dihanich, and I hired a new fitness coach named Ivan Segedi (20 fitness training).

We're in early June. I still have some work in the transfer window to do. Plus I'm fighting to keep Safari and Frei on the team as other clubs are coming after them.

I've reached the start of the 2010-2011 season with Basel, having signed a new 2 year contract extension with a modest raise. Here's a season preview and transfer recap from the summer:

Expectations:

Superleague - Winner

EURO Cup - Group Stage

Swiss Cup - Finals Appearance

By choosing to set my expectations to win the SL my board of course gave me a hefty transfer kitty of over €10M, some of which I've already spent, but most of it will be held on to in case I need to fill holes due to injury, something I'm already starting to have to do.

Transfers Out:

Patrick Pothuizen - €14k to FC Zwole

Massimo Colomba - €130k to Brescia

Cagdas Atan - €800k to Freiburg

Behrang Safari - €1.2M to Catania

Benjamin Hugglel - €825k to Freiburg

I also loaned out 17 of my younger players to various teams, some in the SL and some in the CL

The first 2 sales were made during last season. The Colomba deal has already proven to be a problem - more on that in a minute. I had no intention of selling Safari, one of my best players from last year. But as soon as the season was over he started talking in the press about moving to a bigger reputation club, and when he refused to accept an offer to make him the highest paid player on the team I felt I had no choice but to move him. I used the funds to help bring in a replacement. I also didn't intend to sell Atan, but he wanted key player minutes and money and he just didn't fill that role for me so I sent him packing. I was glad Freiburg decided to complete the Huggel deal. He wasn't really a fit for my team.

Transfers In:

Possebon Rodrigo - €2.5M from Man. U.

Mats Rits - €1.1M from Germinal Beerschot

Thomas Fontaine - €2.6M from Olympique Lyonnais

Denis Bariz - Free

Aron Liechti - Free from Young Boys

Maik Taylor - Free

The Possebon and Rits purchases were agreed to last season. Rits is now one of my top prospects. Rodrigo will fit nicely into one of my MCs now, basically replacing Osei who went back to OM after his loan. Fontaine was a player I'd been chasing since early last year. He had moved once and had refused to talk to me. I was glad he changed his mind as he was my purchase to replace Safari. Bariz is a veteran who I hope can fill holes on the back line till some of the prospects improve. Liechti was a surprise buy from Young Boys. I needed a backup WB and they were shopping him. Their fans weren't too happy that he went to a rival.

And as for Taylor, and how it relates to Colomba, I was forced to run out and buy a goalkeeper just a few days before the start of the regular season when Costanzo went down with a bad hip and is out till at least January. With Colomba now gone and Kuoakbi also injured, I had to find someone decent to start the season.

2010-2011 Basel Starting XI:

GK: Costanzo (/Sommer/Taylor/Kuoakbi will fill in till Costanzo returns)

DL: Fontaine

DR: Lnkoom/Zanni

DC: Baris

DC: Abraham

MC: Possebon

MC: Gelabert

MC: Azofeifa

AMC: Kavianpour

ST: Akrour

ST: Frei

Of course because of his age Akrour is starting to suffer noticeable drops in his ratings. I'm trying to acquire a star ST named Wellington Paulista from Cruziero to complement Frei but so far he hasn't signed the contract I've offered. If I don't get him there are a couple of other guys out there I like. I'm also trying to sign one more goalkeeper, who scouts out as better then Taylor.

Incoming Youth:

When I started the save there were a bunch of youngsters out on loan, many of which are actually pretty good looking prospects. Probably the 2 best were Fabian Frei (Alexander's brother?) and Yann Sommer. I had intended to loan Sommer out but now with Costanzo being down he's going to get to play. The 2 best new prospects to come out of my academy are a midfielder named Giorgio Rossini (4 stars) and DC Samuel Vogel (3 stars). And the board has agreed to upgrade my youth facilities, so one of the best systems in Europe should get even better.

I did manage to sign Paulista for €2.1M from Cruzerio - and he went right out and scored a goal in his first match. I'm thinking this Frei/Paulista combo will be deadly and can take us a long way.

I'm about 2 months into the 2010-2011 season. Basel are currently riding a 7 game unbeaten streak, winning our last 4 straight by a combined 11-0 score. We're 2nd in the SL with a record of 4 wins, 1 loss, and 4 drawn.

We already fulfilled one board goal by reaching the group stage of the EURO Cup. This group looks harder to get through then last year. We'll have to get by Wisla from Poland (already beat them 2-0 in our first match-up), FC Sochaux-Montbeliard from France, and Aston Villa from the UK. But I still think we can make it out of the group and we'll have to if we're going to meet my personal goal of reaching the 2nd knockout round.

Our next match is against Malley in the 1st match of the Swiss Cup, so we should be able to extend our unbeaten string to 8 in a row and if they score on us I'd be surprised. I fully expect to repeat as Cup champs, even though my board will just be happy if we reach the final.

We've battled a lot of injuries so far but we're hanging in there. I am looking to add a DC to bolster the back line a bit. One of our DCs had been great (Abraham), but the rest have been mediocre. I'm also trying to bring in a veteran with 20 influence to act as a "team leader" and also a good looking 16 year old ST prospect from Australia. Beyond those additions I don't anticipate too much change in the next transfer window, barring injuries of course.

Costanzo is almost ready to return to the lineup. Last year's SL Keeper of the Year has been out since the summer. I hope the injury didn't affect his skills too much. And all this just after I sign him to a contract extension. :| Sommer, Kuoakbi, and Taylor have all played fairly well in Costanzo's place.

Paulista has been very good. He was red hot when he first signed, but cooled off of late until scoring in our last match. So far he has 8 goals in 10 games to keep pace with Alexander Frei's 8 goals in 8 games.

As I predicted we did get by Malley without conceding a goal, and then we followed that up with a 4-0 thumping of Luzern. We've now won 6 in a row by a combined score of 18-0 and we're getting scoring from multiple sources. Next up is an away match in the EC with FC Sochaux-Montbeliard, so this will probably be the first test in a while.

Great post, think ill give them a go myself! Any stand out transfers you recommend? Im on the 10.3 patch.

Thanks and good luck! I'd say Wellington Paulista and Hamed Kavianpour have been the best transfers I've gotten. I'd also recommend the 4-3-1-2 tactic I linked to above. Once I started playing that the team has been very hard to beat.

Finally allowed a goal, which isn't really a surprise. Managed to pull out a draw at FC Sochaux-Montbeliard on a very late goal by Valentin Stocker, 1-1. Next up is a rivals match in the SL with Zurich.

Thanks mate for that! Im using a similar tactic but with a DM instead of an AMC, but will give this other tactic ago! Havnt managed to get into a game yet on FM10, keep trying but get bored, so along with my new Arsenal save im going to really give this one ago, when time permits, which isnt as often as i would like lol. Im impressed with your post considering your very new to Football let alone the FM Series! Will think about giving Kavianpour and Paulista both a try out when i get back to the game, will keep post again soon hopefully. Good luck against Zurich, i know they have a pretty strong team!!

Started a save with Basel today. I had a good one in FM09.

Transfers:

Formation:

Thanks for the nice words Flogside. I've learned a lot about the sport through this game and now i watch games live out here in California from the Premiership, Serie A, and UEFA. Looking forward to the quarterfinal matches this week as I'll get to watch them live.

Good luck with your save Viquitor. The one player you sold that I've really liked and decided not to is Reto Zanni. He's been great and while Lnkoom is pretty much the starter now, Zanni still gets into plenty of games. I still have Ferati as well, but more because he's a decent backup that doesn't complain. I like your formation as well, but the way I built my team really seems to favor the AMC approach I'm taking. Still interessting to see how others build their teams.

How do you guys play Streller and Frei? I'm struggling to get them to play

atm Streller is target man attack and Frei complete forward support.

When I had them both I played Streller as TM Attack and Frei as Poacher. Streller only played well when Frei was playing. He was so bad when Frei was out that I sent him to Italy. Now with Frei, Paulista, and Kavianpour I have Frei as a Trequarista, Paulista as a poacher, and Kavianpour in the AMC slot as a Adv. Playmaker Attack. Frei seems to do well in both roles provided someone is able to get him the ball reliably.

With about 1/3 of our starting XI on the bench with injuries or exhaustion, we went out and lost 1-0 to Zurich. We bounced back 3 nights later with a 3-0 win over Thun. Now we have 10 days to prepare for probably the biggest match since I took over the team - a EURO Cup tilt with Aston Villa. If nobody is hurt and my team is rested enough I think we can beat them, but it'll be tough. Will post after the match, including a screenshot or 2.

So the game 10 days after the Thun match was actually our first match in the Swiss Cup, at FC Kriens from the Challenge League. I still had my eye on the next match after that, which is the home game vs. Villa and I admittedly almost overlooked Kriens. I played almost all backups in the Kriens match and even though we dominated the play we found ourselves down 1-0 late. But Kavianpour came off the bench and tied the game and then Castaignos scored his first ever goal for Basel, in added time to propel us past Kriens into the next round. We take on Sion in the next round of the Swiss Cup, the team we beat 2-0 last year to reach the final.

NOW comes the game vs. Aston Villa.....

I would have been happy with a draw. All I'll say is: Wellington Paulista!!!!

Nice result!!! Im going to start my game now! I think ill be giving Wellington Paulista a go for sure! Thanks for the advice Gollum65!! Glad to hear you've become addicted to the beautiful game we call football!

Thanks. Good luck with your save.

So after fairly easy SL wins over Sion & Xamax, during which we played mostly backups to continue to rest our best players, we're back into the EURO Cup. This time we complete the home and home with Aston Villa by heading to Villa Park to see if we can duplicate our home win. If we win again we basically sew up the group with 2 games left. Will post a screenshot of the 2nd Villa result....

Giving up a 2 goal lead in the 2nd half is certainly not great, but if I was going to be satisfied with a home draw then I have to be satisfied with a road draw. I'm sure Villa fans are hoping they never have to see Wellington Paulista again...

After the Villa draw we beat rivals Grasshoppers 2-1 after trailing at halftime. Then we beat league leading Young Boys 2-0 to take over the Superleague lead. We're the first team to 10 wins and we're 10 points into a Champions League qualification spot. Next up is Sion in the Swiss Cup.

I like the look of that Wellington Paulista, but he looks fairly expensive, how much did you get him for?

Im itching to get into my Basel game but i doubt work will let me bring my laptop into work to play FM instead lol

How you doing doing the Euro Cup after the Villa result?