Guten tag, bonjour, ciao, nuqneH – and welcome to the latest chapter of my Football Manager 2021 journeyman series, now coming to you from multi-lingual Switzerland!
The 2029/2030 season is about to kick off, as is Shama Deadman’s tenure as Basel manager. In the last chapter, we met his new squad for the first time and looked at the challenge awaiting them in the Swiss Super League.
Today’s installment will take us through the first half of the new season, as ‘Die Bebbi’ look to end Young Boys’ recent dominance of Swiss football. Can Shama lead them back to the summit, or has the former Győr man taken a step too far?
JULY & AUGUST 2029
We took our steady, unbeaten pre-season form into the first few weeks of the Super League campaign. While our defence was pretty solid (if quiet), we got into a worrying habit of creating loads of low-quality chances without really taking them.
The opening-day win at Luzern – where defenders José Emiliano Cruz and Alessandro Buongiorno got on the scoresheet while our attackers struggled – was a sign of things to come. We weren’t so lucky at home to Sion, who equalised from a rare counter-attack after we failed to turn our dominance into a strong lead.
Our first major test at Zürich ended in a narrow victory, but I made some tactical tweaks before we hosted Servette. Taking more time to build our attacks and work the ball into the box paid off pretty nicely. Strikers Ertan Yalçın and Dennis Zaugg finally came to the party, and Sead Hakšabanović wreaked havoc from out wide in a three-goal cruising.
Then came a visit to Neuchâtel Xamax, who gave us a real test despite struggling at the bottom. It took us almost the entire match to build a clear advantage, and even then, a rare loss of defensive focus meant that Xamax weren’t completely finished until the final whistle.
Despite an underwhelming start, we still found ourselves top after five games. Young Boys had stuttered to three home draws in between a couple of away thrashings, while perennial mid-tablers Lausanne had emerged as surprise early contenders.
Meanwhile, I gave chances to a couple of exciting youth prospects. Left-back Miroslav Gjurcinovski – already a senior North Macedonia international – scored his first goal in an 8-0 Swiss Cup win over non-league Monthey. A week earlier against Servette, a 16-year-old right-winger made history by becoming Basel’s youngest ever first-teamer. His name…
…Manuel Wolf, aka Wolfman. [Come on… are there any British 90s kids who DIDN’T watch “Gladiators”?]
We also battled through the qualifying rounds in the Europa League. A blistering counter-attacking move from midfielder Alexander Jankewitz saw us defeat FC Nordsjælland in Denmark, which meant that a dire goalless home draw sent us through to the Playoff…
…where it was a similar story against Başakşehir. A gruelling first leg in İstanbul ended with Turkish youngster Ertan scoring late on to take a narrow lead into the return fixture at St Jakob-Park. Two goals either side of half-time – the first by my former Győr defender Eduard Ciubotaru – booked our place in the Group Stage…
…where a VERY tough group awaited us! Villarreal had lost two Europa League Finals in recent years, while goals were guaranteed at both ends against Bundesliga entertainers Wolfsburg. Realistically, the best we could hope for was to beat Greek giants PAOK Salonika to 3rd, which would put us into the Europa Conference League knockout rounds.
TRANSFER WINDOW: PART 2
As the transfer window closed, I loaned out some more youngsters for first-team experience – including Gjurcinovski, who went to Super League strugglers Wil. I also sold Ilan Sauter and Burak Alili, who were average backups in defence and midfield respectively. Alili only joined last year and flopped under the previous regime, but we still made a small transfer profit on him.
And these are our last two major signings of the summer. Haralambie Despa is an aggressive ball-playing defender who recently turned 21 but is already an established Romanian international. The former Feyenoord man is very mature for someone so young and should slip effortlessly into an ageing defence. Who knows – maybe he can form a partnership with Ciubotaru for club and country?
I’m also excited about left-back Javier Murillo, who ironically arrives from our Europa group rivals Villarreal. Costing us less than £1million, Javi could prove to be a fantastic bargain if he can develop his crossing abilities and rival his more experienced compatriot Cruz for a starting place!
The third player on that list is Mehmet Karadağ – an 18-year-old Belgian defender who was released by Beerschot in the summer. He might develop into a decent player in the future, but time will tell.
SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER 2029
Our strong start continued just before the international break. A magnificent free-kick from Hakšabanović earned us a vital win over Young Boys… though it was a real battle. The champions resorted to dirty tactics that left three of our attacking players injured, including BOTH our regular right-wingers!
Sadly, the injuries continued to mount up, even after a few weeks away from league action. We barely hung onto a goalless draw at St Gallen, who then leapfrogged us into 1st after we lost our unbeaten record to Lausanne. Things had got so bad that I was having to play a couple of central midfielders out wide, which ruined our attacking rhythm.
We found our stride again by beating Luzern 2-0, but after keeping six clean sheets in our first nine league games, our defence suddenly sprang leaks in October. Even Wil – who were rock-bottom and winless – managed to score against us, though not before Jankewitz and Hakšabanović ripped them apart in the first half.
Our next league game was a 1-1 draw at Sion. Frankly, we were awful throughout that match, which could have gone even worse had the hosts not missed a penalty early in the second half. (Apparently, the only three certainties in life are death, taxes, and your wing-backs giving away clumsy fouls in the penalty area.)
We weren’t so fortunate when Zürich came to St Jakob-Park, though. FCZ absolutely battered us in the first half, only to miss a hatload of chances in a goalless first half. But when Despa fired us ahead against the run of play with 15 minutes left, they hit back with two late goals to inflict my first home defeat at Basel. Silly defensive mistakes were costing us, and we had fallen to 3rd place – two points behind St Gallen.
More positively, we had breezed through the early rounds in the Swiss Cup. Wolfman scored his first senior goal in an 8-0 demolition of Düdingen, before we haunted Challenge League side Breitenrein on Halloween. Those wins put us through to a February Quarter Final against… Sion away. Oh boy.
But we were also looking good in our Europa League group, sitting 2nd at the halfway stage. We produced a very clinical performance to thump PAOK 3-0 at home, before an impressive 1-1 draw at Wolfsburg, and then a narrow defeat to runaway leaders Villarreal. Qualification for the knockout rounds was definitely in our hands!
NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2029
And then we hit a rough patch in November. Yes, we did beat Neuchâtel Xamax to go top again, but only because of a penalty and an own goal. While we did keep our first clean sheet in seven games, creating and converting quality chances was still a major issue, which only got worse in our next two games.
Though we bounced back from a slow start to draw at Servette, we couldn’t produce a similar performance at Young Boys. Another blunt attacking display sent us crashing back down to 3rd, and as we entered December, I was really wondering what I’d let myself in for.
Admittedly, a lot of our inconsistency was down to me frequently chopping and changing tactics. We went through a 4-2-3-1, a 4-3-3, a tiki-taka style, and even tried gegenpressing for a while. Eventually, I told myself, “Stop the nonsense, Shama! Decide on a tactic – and BLOODY STICK WITH IT!”
So I did… and we ended the year much more strongly. After a miserable first half at home to St Gallen, in which we were lucky to still be level at the break, I switched to a counter-attacking 4-4-2. We returned for the second half with renewed gusto, as Salifou Diarrassouba scored twice up front and playmaker Raul Quevedo dictated the midfield to secure a priceless 2-0 win!
With our confidence restored, we then recorded back-to-back 3-1s against Lausanne and Wil. And so, after a topsy-turvy first half to the Super League season, we went into the winter break back on top – leading Young Boys by two points and St Gallen by three!
Meanwhile in the Europa League, our bid to reach the knockout rounds went right to the wire. A home loss to a much stronger Villarreal team and a drab stalemate at PAOK meant that it all came down to our final match – at home to Wolfsburg.
Both teams had 5 points from 5 games. Head-to-head was the first tiebreaker, but as our last meeting in Germany had finished 1-1, we were ahead of ‘Die Wölfe’ only on goal difference. This meant that we would qualify with either a win, a 0-0 draw, or a 1-1 draw.
Naturally, the match finished in a 2-2 draw! To be fair, we recovered tremendously from a very poor start, with a brace from 21-year-old winger Jean-Pierre Bodin pulling us back from 2-0 down. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the energy to push for a third goal late on… and so Wolfsburg pipped us to 2nd on away goals. Sad face.
In such a difficult group, finishing 3rd was no disgrace. It at least kept us in Europe, though we were demoted to the Europa Conference League, where we would play in the first knockout round (the Round of 24) against…
…CSKA Moscow. The Russian Premier League is probably at a slightly higher level than the Swiss Super League, so they could be tricky opponents. But hey, there are no easy ties in European competitions.
MID-SEASON REVIEW
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve had real problems trying to find a tactic that really suits this team. But after much chopping and changing, a strong end to the year has suggested that the old faithful might be the answer. Ladies and gentlemen, Basel will be pl… [yeah, yeah, stop quoting Mike Bassett again! -Fuller FM reader].
But just like at Győr, I’ve found that a counter-attacking 4-4-2 actually produces more chances (and of higher quality) than a more attractive system like a 4-2-3-1. Honestly, it doesn’t matter which roles I use for an attacking midfielder and a lone striker – they just don’t gel together as well as two frontmen.
Dropping the two wingers back also gives us a bit more defensive solidity, especially as our full-backs are probably the weakest positions in our team. Both our right-backs are wildly inconsistent, and while left-back Cruz has done well domestically, he has been a liability in the Europa League.
Despite that, I’m very happy with our centre-backs’ resilience under pressure, which has kept our opposition shot conversion rate down to a respectable 9%. At the other end, we’re scoring from about 11% of our shots, which is higher than Young Boys and St Gallen. There’s not much to complain about, but if we can do a slightly better job of breaking down those weaker and more defensive teams, we should be favourites for the title.
Before I go, I want to highlight a couple of homegrown players who’ve become quite important to us. I’ve been deploying a deep-lying playmaker more often lately, and Quevedo has been my go-to man in that role. With his passing, vision and athleticism, he looks like a young Sergio Busquets – in more sense than one.
There was, though, one issue with Raul. Just before the winter holidays, I noticed that his contract had a £1.5million release clause that was attracting interest from some bigger clubs (and Leeds). There was a real fear that we’d lose one of our most talented academy products for a ludicrously cheap price.
Luckily, I convinced Quevedo to sign a new, improved four-and-a-half-year deal – without a release clause! Thank heavens for that! Can you imagine how stupid I would’ve looked if I’d let him repeat the George Kovács fiasco from last year?
Another player who’s emerged from the Basel youth system to become a first-teamer is Yalçın. This is the 19-year-old’s first season as a regular starter, and he has so far delivered 12 goals and five assists in 29 matches. For a young deep-lying forward who’s not an especially reliable finisher, I’d say that’s a decent return!
Unfortunately, Ertan has a tendency to waste the easy opportunities while scoring the more difficult ones (I call it Louie Barry syndrome). Our coaches are looking to address that by training him to ‘place shots’ – a trait which suits technical and intelligent strikers. Once the young Turk adds that to his locker, I’m sure he will live up to his billing as “the new Hakan Şükür” (just without the part where he ends up as a taxi driver in political exile).
In the meantime, I’ll also be looking for a pacey striker who can play alongside Ertan. I don’t think Dennis Zaugg is the answer, as ‘The Menace’ is more like a mouse when it comes to his composure. We’ve still got loads of money in the bank after a quiet summer window, so maybe January’s the right time to splash out!
Basel lead the Swiss Super League at the halfway point, and Shama is a step closer to finally winning his first league championship! But there’s still a lot of football to be played, and there can be no room for complacency.
Please join me again soon, where I’ll recap the second half of the 2029/2030 season – and we’ll find out whether Shama kicks off the new decade with some precious silverware.
Thanks for reading! [Qatlho’qu’!]
Fuller FM 
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