The 1995–96 Fussball Club Basel 1893 season was their 103rd season since the club's foundation. Peter Epting was the club's chairman for the fourth period. FC Basel played their home games in the St. Jakob Stadium. Following their promotion in the 1993–94 season this was their second season back in the highest tier of Swiss football. Overview Pre-season Claude Andrey was again the club's manager, this was his third period as head-coach. However, due to a poor start to the season, he lost his job during October. Oldrich Svab then took over on an interim basis, until Karl Engel was appointed as new head-coach. There were a few players that left the squad. Mart van Duren retired from active football, Martin Jeitziner also retired from professional football and moved on to Old Boys, Ralph Steingruber moved onto St. Gallen, Asif Šarić returned to Germany and joined Sportfreunde Siegen and Thomas Karrer was on loan to Grenchen. The club's priority aim for the season was to remain in the top flight of Swiss football. Therefore, the club made a number of new signings as the season started, these included the Nigerian national team goalkeeper Ike Shorunmu, who signed in from Shooting Stars, Gabriel Okolosi, who signed in from Africa Sports National, and Alex Nyarko, who came from Sportul. Another promising player was Vilmar who signed in from Ferroviária. David Orlando was signed in from Sion, the young Bruno Sutter from Young Fellows Zürich and Daniele Moro signed in from Xamax. Further, large number of youngsters were brought up from the youth team to train with the first team squad. Domestic league The reform of the Nationalliga had been completed the previous season and the top two divisions were each contested by 12 teams. In the first stage, both divisions would play a qualification round. In the second stage the top eight teams of the Nationalliga A would play a championship round, with half the points from the first stage as bonus. The top four teams from the Nationalliga B would play a promotion/relegation round with the bottom four teams from Nationalliga A. However, there was one change at the start of the 1995–96 Nationalliga A season and that was that the Swiss Football Association introduced the three points for a win standard. This had been introduced by the FA in England in 1981, but did not attract much use elsewhere until