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Basel, Switzerland. With only three coaches since the turn of the century, Champions League upstart FC Basel is a rare case of stability in the turbulent sea of European club football.

A large contingent of homegrown talent, prudence in the transfer market and boisterous local support makes it the sort of club that UEFA president Michel Platini, who is desperately trying to persuade European clubs to reign in their spending, would like to see flourish.

Basel pulled off an upset on Wednesday with its 1-0 win over four-time European champion Bayern Munich in the first leg of its round of 16 tie.

Seven of the players who started the game were Swiss. Four of those were young players who have passed through the club’s much-praised youth divisions.

They include goalkeeper Yann Sommer (23), who produced an outstanding performance to deny Bayern’s forwards as well as midfielders Granit Xhaka (19) and Fabian Frei (23) and winger Xherdan Shaqiri (20), who is one of Swiss football’s brightest prospects.

Twenty-two-year-old substitute Valentin Stocker, who scored the late winner, is another who came up through Basel’s youth divisions.

The other Swiss team members, midfield strongman Benjamin Huggel and striking duo Alexander Frei and Marco Streller, are all players in their 30s who began their careers at the club and have returned for a swan song.

Foreign signings are used to plug the holes, but Basel shies away from big names. Instead, the club is happy to be used as a springboard by young players looking for a starting point in Europe before moving on to a bigger league.

Dominant at home, having won the Swiss league six times since 2002, Basel has long appreciated that it cannot compete with the clubs from the bigger European leagues, although it can give them a hard time.

“We know who we are and where we want to go,” said club president Bernhard Heusler, after Basel was drawn against Bayern in December.

Heusler said that he was aware the club would eventually have to sell its best young players abroad, such as the impish Shaqiri, who has already been signed by Bayern and will join the German club in June.

Basel’s relative success could serve as a role model for other clubs in leagues outside the big five of England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany, who try to over-reach themselves.

Salzburg, which has dominated the Austrian domestic scene in recent years, has gone down the opposite path since being taken over by the Red Bull company in 2005.

The club has spent lavishly on foreign players yet failed in its stated ambition of playing in the Champions League, having repeatedly fallen in the qualifying rounds. Fans were alienated when the colors were changed to Red Bull’s trademark red and blue, so much so that a splinter group set up a new club that plays in the original purple and white. That club has now reached the third division.

Basel, on the other hand, regularly pulls in crowds of between 20,000 and 30,000 for a home match, no mean feat in a small country where football vies with alpine skiing and ice hockey for public interest.

However, for away games in places such as Thun and Sion, it can find itself playing in front of only a few thousand.

Basel’s policy of continuity extends to the coaches.

Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Christian Gross laid the foundations for the current side when he was in charge from 1999 to 2009. He was followed by Thorsten Fink, and when the former Bayern midfielder left to join Hamburg in October, he was replaced by his assistant Heiko Vogel, who, like his predecessor, is another German taking his first steps in senior coaching.

Having lost his first match in Europe against Benfica, the 36-year-old Vogel has an unbeaten record since then.

“My team have unbelievable willpower, a good sense of understanding on the pitch, a sense of who they are and a healthy self-confidence,” said Vogel. “There’s a great spirit, we are happy at work every day and that makes a difference.”

Reuters