The FC Basel 1901–02 season was the ninth season in their existence. It was the third season that they played for the Swiss championship in the Series A. The club's chairman was Emanuel Schiess. This was his second period as the club's chairman. In this season Basel played their home games in a new location, next to the Thiersteinerallee, in the Gundeldingen neighborhood in the south-eastern part of the municipality of Basel.
During the early years of the football sport, an adequate field that could be used as a football pitch was the biggest problem for all clubs. At the very beginning, FC Basel were lucky to find the Landhof, which had just been taken over by Katharina Ehrler-Wittich from the inheritors of Andreas Merian-Iselin [de], a member of the Merian family. Straight after the club's foundation, she made the Landhof available, free of charge for the first few years, as a playing surface. From 1895 to 1901, the Vélodrome de Bâle, a cycle track, was also located around the grounds. As the Vélodrome club dissolved a new tenant was found and at the start of the 1901–02 season a new football ground had to be found, because the new tenants had built a concrete bowling lane right across the middle of the football pitch.
The club tried and tested the FC Excelsior grounds and the sports grounds next to St. Paul's Church, but to no avail. They eventually found a space in the Thiersteinerallee, right next to the pitch that local rivals BSC Old Boys were using. The Landhof was to the north of the river Rhine and the Thiersteinerallee was about eight kilometers south. The move from the former field to the new field was made late in the evening, the heavy goal posts and crossbars being carried manually across the town in the dark, so that no one would notice that the club was lacking money. This new pitch was used for one and a half years until the concrete bowling alley was eventually removed.[1]
Alphonse Schorpp was the team captain for the third successive season and as captain, he led the team training and was responsible for the line-ups. Basel played two pre-season friendlies and two during the mid-season. During the winter break and again at the end of the season the team travelled twice to France to play Mulhouse. Both games ended with a victory. Of the total 11 friendlies that the team played that season seven were won and four ended with a defeat.[2]
Basel played two friendly games against FC Gymnasia 1900, a team that had been newly founded in February 1900 by young players from the upper gymnasium, who united to form a football team. The team was attempting to join the Swiss Football Association. (In January 1904 the club dissolved and merged with Old Boys).[3]
By the end of the previous season 15 clubs with more than 1,000 members had joined the Swiss Football Association. Most of the clubs had two or three teams, therefore the third tier of Swiss football was introduced called Serie C. From a local point of view this meant the following: Serie A with Basel, Old Boys, Fortuna Basel and Excelsior Basel. Serie B with Old Boys II, Basel II and Excelsior Basel II. Serie C with Columbia Basel, Fortuna Basel II, Gymnasia Basel and Nordstern Basel.[4]
The Swiss Serie A season 1901–02 was divided into three regional groups. There were five teams in the east group, five in the central group and four in the west group. Basel were allocated to the central group together with the Young Boys Bern and the afore mentioned three other teams from Basel. Although Fortuna had been relegated the previous season, their reserve team had been Serie B champions and achieved promotion. Excelsior were disqualified from the Serie A by the Swiss Football Association (ASF-SFV) in the mid-season. The reason was that they had illegally poached players from their local rivals, FC Fortuna Basel.[5] The already achieved sporting results were retained in the league table, the missing games were not awarded. FC Basel completed the central division with seven games, five victories and two defeats with ten points, but were one point behind YB who qualified for the finals.[6]
From the west group, FC Bern and the east group, FC Zürich also qualified for the championship play-off. FCZ won the championship.[7]
^Zindel, Josef (2018), "Die ersten 125 Jahre / 1901 and 1902 Kegelbahn abgetragen", Page 16, 1901 and 1902 Dismantling a bowling alley, Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel
^Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv”. "Bilanz 1901–02". Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv”. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
(NB: Despite all efforts, the editors of these books and the authors in "Basler Fussballarchiv" have failed to be able to identify all the players, their date and place of birth or date and place of death, who played in the games during the early years of FC Basel. Most of the documentation for this season is missing.)
Emanuel Schiess
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