Basel indebted to Frei, the man making them tick

• Fabian Frei admits there is plenty for Basel to work on before the second leg
• Defender Danilo says a first-leg draw was the least Porto deserved
• Basel coach Paulo Sousa admits Porto were the better team
• Danilo cancels out Derlis Gonzalez's early goal as the first leg ends 1-1
• The return match is on 10 March at the Estádio do Dragão

When Fabian Frei arrives for his post-match interview with UEFA.com deep under St. Jakob-Park, the sweat of 90 minutes of effort during FC Basel 1893's 1-1 draw with FC Porto is still dripping from him. He asks politely in which language it will be conducted.

Equally at ease in French, English and his native German, the midfielder is the archetypal Basel player, tailor-made for a dressing room in which English is the lingua franca binding together Paulo Sousa's cosmopolitan band.

If English is the common thread of communication, then Frei is the man who helps the Swiss champions present a united front on the pitch. It says much that when club icon Marco Streller was substituted against Porto, the veteran striker – as was already the case when the forward was injured in the group stage – passed the armband not to former UEFA Champions League winner Walter Samuel, but to Frei.

Perhaps appropriately enough in a country renowned for its timepieces, the Switzerland midfielder is the one who makes Basel tick, and he did so again on Wednesday.

When Porto broke towards Tomáš Vaclík's goal on a bitterly chilly evening, Frei was there to thwart their attacks, and he was just as willing and able to provide an outlet for a team-mate in trouble as the visitors suffocated Sousa's side.

Yet the 26-year-old has much more to his game than the destructive arts and undoubted leadership skills, clipping the ball over the Porto back four and landing it with rare precision perfectly into the stride of Derlis Gonzalez, who gave Basel a first-half lead.

"It was great. I would have preferred us to have won in the end, but it wasn't easy against a good opponent," explained Frei, whose three assists in this season's competition are bettered only by Koke and Cesc Fàbregas. "In the end, it doesn't matter who played well, we play as a team. We didn't play to our best today, but we still have 90 minutes."

Frei's ability to win and hold the ball, and then spot a defence-splitting pass, will be crucial when Basel travel to Portugal for the return leg on 10 March.

Having secured a draw at Anfield on matchday six to pip Liverpool FC to a place in the knockout phase, Basel have justifiable cause for optimism. Their hero that December night was Frei, whose goal was enough for the away team to progress to the last 16 for only the third time in the club's history.

With their self-belief bolstered by that achievement, Frei reckons Basel can repeat the trick at the Estádio do Dragão.

"There are many things we can do better, but we have two or three weeks to look at it, and it's another game," Frei, who has been at Basel for a decade, rising from youth academy to first team, said. "We scored a goal today, we can certainly score a goal in Porto, and with that, everything is possible."