GC beats FC Basel and leaves last place in the table

FC Basel suffered a surprising home defeat at the end of the year. He lost 0-1 to the Grasshoppers, who had previously been winless for nine games in a row.

The Christmas break comes at the right time for FCB. After the almost perfect weeks in November and the interim jump to the top of the Super League, he has lost some of his enthusiasm. There were only two points from the last three games in the championship. Fabio Celestini’s team failed to score against GC for the first time since the end of September.

The overall picture of the last half-year remains positive from the Basel team’s point of view and the slip-up against the excellent fighting team GC wasn’t all bad either. The favorites had a lot of possession, especially in the second half, and held up well in the duels. The best of the few chances to score was defused by the strong GC goalie Justin Hammel after just under an hour when Marin Soticek’s shot from close range was too central.

The Grasshoppers, who are compact and dangerous on the counterattack, benefited from a mistake by young defender Jonas Adjetey with their golden goal in the 21st minute, which allowed Noah Persson to run alone towards Marwin Hitz and finish successfully. For the Swedish YB loanee it was the first goal in the Super League in the 41st game.

The one goal and the good defensive work afterwards secured GC’s first win since the 1-0 win at Young Boys two and a half months ago and the first three points under coach Tomas Oral. Three points that take GC away from the bottom of the table for the first time since the 9th round.

Basel – Grasshoppers 0:1 (0:1)
23’486 Zuschauer. SR Small.
Tor: 21. Persson (Meyer) 0:1.
Basel: Hitz; Mendes (87. Beney), Barisic, Adjetey (66. van Breemen), Schmid; Leroy, Xhaka (78. Sigua); Soticek (66. Fink), Shaqiri, Kade; Kevin Carlos (66. Ajeti).
Grasshoppers: Hammel; Abels, Decarli, Seko, Persson; Abrasive (75. Stroke); Morandi (94. Verón Lupi), Meyer, Ndenge, Maurin (60. Muci); Lee Young-Jun (60. Bachelor).
Warnings: 28. Decarli, 43. Abrashi, 54. Meyer, 56. Lee Young-Jun, 73. van Breemen.

FC Lugano celebrates its fourth victory in the fifth league game of the Conference League and is at least in the round of 16. The Ticino team won 2-1 at Legia Warsaw.

The leader of the Super League showed an improvement in the fourth place in the Polish championship, which was rewarded with three points thanks to goals from Mattia Bottani (40th) and Albian Hajdari (74th). This means that coach Mattia Croci-Torti’s team can no longer be pushed out of the top 24 of the Conference League after the penultimate match of the league phase.