UEFA Cup Draw

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Originally Posted by Volltreffer

The French spelling is Bâle. By the way, Basel is German-speaking. The club is called "FC Basel 1893" and nothing else

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

What Volltreffer said! Though it got me thinking that I don't know where Basle comes from.

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"Basle" is possibly the English spelling. The French is indeed "Bâle", and as with most French words containing a circonflex (the "^") it normally stands for a silent "S" that used to be spelled with the "S". English has taken the French version of many towns in mainland Europe, even when the inhabitants mostly don't speak French (such as Bruge-Brugge, Cologne-Koln, Louvain-Leuven, Turin-Torino). In the case of "Bâle" there was probably an imperitive to maintain the ^ somehow which in fact meant using the "Basle" spelling.

In English the name of the city was traditionally pronounced as "Baal", but "Baz-el" is now also used alot, the choice depending on how franco- or germano-phile you are feeling that day.

Isn't Basle also the main hooligan club in the Swiss league, or did they sort out their support base? I do know that some years ago they had a bad reputation, while no one had troubles with fans of Grasshoppers (the other big team in terms of Swiss European entries)

The Swiss league IMO is quite underestimated. The results from the Swiss clubs in Europe has been quite well for a small country (during the last 10 years we often saw Grasshoppers and Basle doing well in the CL and UEFA Cup + we had stunts from Thun and Sankt-Gallen)

FCB? Not as far as I know... They've been prominatly in Europe the last few seasons really (certainly since 2002, when they knocked Liverpool out) without any bother.

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Originally Posted by eirebhoy

Strasbourg - yes
VfB Stuttgart - no
Palermo - yes
Sevilla - yes
Steaua Bucharest - yes
Bolton - no
Hertha Berlin - no
Monaco - no
Udinese - yes
Zenit St Petersburg - yes
AS Roma - yes
Shalke 04 - yes
Shakhtar Donetsk - no
Hamburg - yes
AZ - no :(
Levski Sofia - yes

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10 out of 16 right. Not great. :)

where are Zenit St. Petersburg from? never heard of them before this season!there doing well though

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Originally Posted by feo123

where are Zenit St. Petersburg from? never heard of them before this season!there doing well though

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Saint Petersburg, in Russia!:rolleyes: