Cod Almighty | Article

by Martin Handsley

2 September 2002

We'd been looking forward to this game since learning that FC Basel were going to play in the Champions League qualifiers. The fact that they were playing Celtic was a big bonus - we were really looking forward to a British team coming to Basel. Add this to the fact that, although losing 3-1, they'd played quite well in Glasgow. Of course we didn't expect FCB to proceed into the group stages - we thought that they would at least make a game of things and my prediction before the game was a 2-1 win to Celtic.

Basel is normally quite a peaceful town. Obviously there are police, but their presence isn't felt in our normal day-to-day routines. This changed on the day of the match. Everyone knew something was going on, even all the non-believers (in football that is) knew that SOMETHING BIG was happening, as the police started the task of making sure that their presence was felt. As I got closer to the city on my way to work, we were passed by several police paddy wagons, and there were uniformed officers on every street corner.

The Celtic fans had been arriving over a couple of days, and had been generally well behaved. Pissed most of the time but well behaved. The locals couldn't get to grips with the fact that when pissed the average Scottish football fan will find somewhere to sleep, normally on the nearest bench of piece of grass. There were lots of funny looks from the locals as they took in these sights on their way around the city.

I've been a regular at FCB since arriving in Basel last September, and although they completed the double last season the standard of opposition, and therefore the footy, wasn't always the best on offer.

The stadium and facilities are the best I've regularly encountered, certainly much better than Blundell Park, but the football last season was mostly shite. FCB easily won the League and didn't really meet any trouble in the Cup, even though we expat's regularly argued that we were watching the same kind of football we would see in the lower reaches of Division One.

However the first 45 minutes of football were absolutely amazing! I have never seen FCB play like they did in the first half. It was a con job of the most outrageous proportions!

If Celtic had been watching FCB in the League matches they played in the games just before the Champions League qualifier, then they would have seen them play some incredibly poor football! This must have been the reason why Martin O'Neil decided to start with 4-4-2 at the back opposed to the normal 3-5-2 Celtic employ to great affect in Scotland, and this was the very reason Celtic lost the game!

Two great goals in the first half and resolute defending in the second half saw FCB go through, leaving the Scottish champions a chance of Uefa Cup glory. And FCB (and us fans) looking forward to trips to Moscow, Liverpool and Valencia.

After the game came the commiserations and beer! Even though their side and been beaten, the Celtic fans were incredibly well behaved and managed to drown their sorrows without causing too much trouble.

FC Basel, and Swiss football in particular, have come a long way in quite a short period of time. It wasn't too long ago when Basel played in a decrepit stadium to a couple of thousand fans each week and Zurich Grasshoppers were the only team from Switzerland known to the rest of the world.

What it took to turn things around was putting a man in charge that knew where he wanted the football club to be and who worked tirelessly to achieve his aim. I'm not talking about the coach, ex-Spurs manager Christian Gross, but FCB president René C. Jäggi who masterminded the new stadium at St Jacob, as well as the massive personnel changes at the club, and who's also rumored to be taking over at Bayern Leverkusen at the end of this season.

It seems a pity that we fans of GTFC don't have someone at the top of our club who would be capable of stopping what seems to be an inevitable slide of Grimsby Town FC into the lower reaches of English professional football.