Night of missed opportunities as Stuttgart fall to defeat in Basel

In front of a raucous atmosphere at St. Jakob-Park, it took Basel just three minutes to open the scoring. After Angelo Stiller was dispossessed in midfield, a careless backpass from Lorenz Assignon gave striker Albian Ajeti the chance to outstrength Ramon Hendriks, which he did magnificently, before rolling the ball under the onrushing Alexander Nübel.

Throughout the majority of the first half, Basel were passing the ball much better than they did last week in Freiburg, with veteran Xherdan Shaqiri at the heart of things both on the ball and from a leadership perspective.

The hosts came close to doubling their lead in the 18th minute, when Jeremy Agbonifo struck the outside of the post with a left-footed effort from the edge of the box.

Stuttgart were threatening, however, Basel were doing a fantastic job of preventing VfB from getting into the rhythm seen in recent weeks.

And the visitors wouldn’t have had a better chance to level the scores than in the 33rd minute when Tiago Tomas was brought down inside the box, resulting in a Stuttgart penalty. 

And Ermedin Demirovic will surely look upon the moment in hindsight as he stood 12 yards out through the entirety of a lengthy VAR check. After a period of cacophonous noise from the home support, the Bosnian forward stepped up and saw his penalty saved brilliantly by Marwin Hitz, who got a strong hand to the ball down to his right-hand side.

It was clear that Stuttgart were going to have to scrap their way through this one as they went into half-time a goal down.