Schmidiger played his youth football with local amateur club SV Muttenz and advanced to their first team during the summer 1995 and played one season in the 2nd League, the fourth tier of Swiss football.
During his time with the club Schmidiger played a total of 16 games for Basel without scoring a goal.
He then transferred to division rivals FC Concordia Basel and played as semi-professional.
Schmidiger obtained his vocational diploma at the commercial school of business in Liestal in 1997.
After his professional football career, he visited a higher technical school for economics for his further education.