1936–37 FC Basel season

Heinz Körner was appointed as new team manager. He followed Alwin Riemke who moved to Germany to manage SpVgg Greuther Fürth. Körner had been manager of Aarau the previous season. He was the tenth professional team manager/trainer in Basel's history, their tenth foreign trainer. How long Körner stayed with the club is not clearly stated, but he left during the season, and afterwards Fernand Jaccard took over as player-manager. Jaccard was the club's first professional Swiss trainer. Basel played a total of 40 matches in their 1936–37 season. 26 of these matches were in the Nationalliga, one in the Swiss Cup and 13 were friendly matches. Of these 13 friendlies eight were played at home in the Landhof, three others in Switzerland and one each as visitors to RC Strasbourg and to SC Freiburg.[1]

Further league reforms took place before the season started. The number of teams in the 1936–37 Nationalliga was reduced by one team, thus contested by 13 teams and played as round-robin. Two teams were to be relegated and only one promoted to reduce the number of teams to 12 the following year. Basel played a very poor and un-consistent season. Only thanks to four consecutive victories towards the end of the campaign lifted the team to finish in joint second last position in the league table. Because La Chaux-de-Fonds and Basel both had 20 points, they had to have a play-off against relegation. This ended in a draw and so a replay was required. The replay was played in the Stadion Neufeld in Bern on 20 June 1937 and ended in a 1–0 victory for Basel and so they prevented relegation at the last possible moment.[2]

In the 1st principal round of the Swiss Cup Basel were drawn at home in the Landhof against lower tier Concordia Basel and were defeated and knocked out of the competition. Grasshopper Club won both championship and cup.[3]

The following is the list of the Basel first team squad during the season 1936–37. The list includes players that were in the squad the day the season started on 2 August 1936 but subsequently left the club after that date.

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Pos. Nation Player — GK   SUI Eugène de Kalbermatten — GK   SUI Ernst Kipfer — DF   SUI Robert Büchi — DF   SUI Louis Favre — MF   SUI Ernst Hufschmid — DF  GER Emil Hummel — DF   SUI Heinrich Diethelm — DF   SUI Heinz Elsässer — MF   SUI August Ibach — MF   SUI Fernand Jaccard — MF   SUI Caspar Monigatti

No. Pos. Nation Player — MF   SUI Paul Schaub — MF   SUI Fritz Schmidlin (I) — MF   SUI Guglielmo Spadini — MF   SUI Ferdinand Spichiger — MF   SUI Eduard Zuber — FW   SUI Enrico Ardizzoia — FW  AUT Josef Artimovicz — FW   SUI Maurice Dubosson — FW  AUT Gottfried Havlicek — FW   SUI Othmar Saner — FW   SUI H. Weber (I) — FW   SUI Alfons Weber (II)

Players who left the squad

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Pos. Nation Player — GK   SUI Hugo Burkhardt — GK  FRG Alwin Riemke — MF   SUI Hans Greiner — MF   SUI Walter Schmidlin (II) — MF  AUT Ludwig Stroh

No. Pos. Nation Player — FW   SUI Karl Bielser — FW   SUI Alfred Jaeck — FW   SUI Walter Müller — FW   SUI Alfred Schlecht — FW   SUI Federico Schott

• History of FC Basel
• List of FC Basel players
• List of FC Basel seasons

• Rotblau: Jahrbuch Saison 2014/2015. Publisher: FC Basel Marketing AG. ISBN 978-3-7245-2027-6
• Die ersten 125 Jahre. Publisher: Josef Zindel im Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel. ISBN 978-3-7245-2305-5
• FCB team 1936/37 at fcb-archiv.ch
• Switzerland 1936/37 by Erik Garin at Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation

• FC Basel official site