Erni Maissen says he wrote as a schoolboy that he wanted to become a footballer and play for FC Basel, a wish that began long before the first contract and long before the first league title. What he remembers most clearly is the moment itself: a child in the 4th or 5th grade putting the club name on paper and then, years later, finding his way into its youth system.
That detail is drawing attention now because Maissen, who later played for Basel, Zürich and YB and earned 29 caps for the Nati, is being remembered not just as a former top-flight forward but as someone who knew early where he wanted to land. The wish did not come from nowhere. His first eight years were spent in Trun, where he said Rätoromanisch was his mother tongue, before his family moved to Reinach BL in 1966 after his mother met a new man who took a job there.
For Maissen, the move was hard. He said he lost his friends and the mountains at the same time. But he also said his stepfather regularly took him to the Joggeli, where he collected bottles in the stands and got 50 Rappen deposit for each one. Sometimes, he said, he would even pull a half-empty bottle away from between a spectator’s legs. That is where the boy who made plenty of mischief began to meet the game he says he had already chosen for himself.
He does not describe a spotless childhood. He said he was not a regular kindergarten attendee, that he played on the station on the second day of school and was fetched by someone from the school, and that the station master chased him several times and wanted to give him a beating. He also said teachers sometimes hit children on the fingers with a ruler and that children who talked in church were made to line up in the sacristy and receive a strike from the priest. Even so, the ambition was already there in plain words: “I want to become a footballer and play for FC Basel.”
The route into the club was less romantic, and that is what makes it matter. In 1973, he got a trial training session at FC Basel because of a colleague, was told after the first session to apply for the player pass immediately, and then heard there would be a match on Saturday in Zofingen in which he could take part. He played well, and soon afterward he moved to the B juniors of FC Basel. The pattern is clear: the childhood wish was followed by a small opening, then by a test, then by a place that stuck.
That path matters because it led to the career that followed. Maissen later won the Swiss championship with FC Basel in 1977 and 1980, reached the cup final in 1982 with the club and lost to Sion, then returned to Basel again after spells with Zürich and YB. He now lives with his wife Chantal in Reinach BL and has two adult sons. The unanswered piece is not whether he made it. It is how often a boy from Trun who once fetched bottles at the Joggeli was already writing his future before FC Basel ever gave him a shirt.
