Karlsruher SC

Karlsruher Sport Club is a German football club, based in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg. The club rose out of the mergers of a number of predecessor clubs.

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History

A succession of mergers

The most successful of these ancestral clubs was FC Phönix, formed in 1894. They quickly became a strong regional side and in 1909 defeated defending champion Viktoria Berlin (4:2) to capture the national title. Phönix merged with FC Alemannia in 1912 to form KFC Phoenix (Phoenix Alemannia). The team slipped from upper league competition until 1936, when after a remarkable season in which they won 30 of 34 games, they earned admission to the Gauliga established under the Third Reich. From 1943 to 1945 the club played with Germania Durlach as the combined wartime side Phoenix/Germania Karlsruhe.

Two other threads in the evolution of KSC were the formation of FC Mühlburg in 1905 out of 1. FV Sport Mühlburg (1890) and Viktoria Mühlburg (1892), and the merger of FC Germania (1898) and FC Weststadt (1902) to form VfB Karlsruhe in 1911. FC Mühlburg and VfB Karlsruhe would in turn merge to form VfB Mühlburg in 1933. The group of clubs which came together to form VfB Mühlburg were an undistinguished lot, sharing just one season of upper league play between them. The new side, however, played its way into first level football immediately after World War II.

The formation of Karlsruher SC

KFC Phoenix (Phoenix Alemannia) and VfB Mühlburg united to form the current club, Karlsruher Sport-Club Mühlburg-Phönix e.V., in 1952. The team had good results throughout the remainder of the decade: in 1955, they beat FC Schalke 04 (3:2) to win the German Cup, and repeated the next year with a 3:1 win over Hamburger SV. That season they also made an appearance in the national final, which they lost 2:4 to Borussia Dortmund. The KSC was Oberliga Süd champion in 1956, 1958, and 1960, as well as runner-up in the German Cup in 1960. Their record earned them admission as one of sixteen founding clubs into Germany's new professional football league, the Bundesliga, when it began play in 1963.

Karlsruhe struggled in the top flight, never managing better than a 13th place finish over five seasons before finally being demoted to Regionalliga Süd (II). Over the next three seasons the team earned a first and two second-place finishes there, but were unable to advance in the promotion rounds. Only after the formation of the Second Bundesliga did a first place finish in 1975 enable them to return to the top flight. The club would spend the next dozen seasons bouncing back and forth between the first and second tiers.

The Schäfer era

Under the guidance of new coach Winfried Schäfer, the KSC returned to the Bundesliga for an eleven-year turn beginning with the 1987-88 season, and for the first time managed to work their way out of the bottom half of the league table. In 1994, the club had a successful run in the UEFA Cup, going out only in the semi-final on away goals against Austria Salzburg after beating, in turn, PSV Eindhoven, Valencia CF, Girondins Bordeaux, and Boavista Porto. Their stunning 7-0 second-round victory over then-league leader Valencia might be considered the high point of the club's history in its centennial year. Between 1992 and 1997, the club was ranked in the single digits in six consecutive Bundesliga seasons and also participated in two more UEFA Cups, reaching the 3rd round both in 1997 and 1998. As the millennium drew to a close, Karlsruhe faded. Schäfer was fired, but this did not keep the club from slipping to the 2nd Bundesliga in 1998 and in 2000 to regional, third-tier football (Regionalliga Süd) by a last place finish and dire financial circumstances. They have since returned to the 2nd Bundesliga, but remained mired in the bottom half of the league table before moving back into contention for promotion during the 2005-06 season.

Honours

German Champions: 1909
German Vice-champions: 1956
German Cup: 1955, 1956
German Cup finalist: 1960, 1996
UEFA Cup: 1994 (semi finals), 1997 (3rd round), 1998 (3rd round)
UEFA Intertoto Cup: 1996

2005/06 Squad

As of December 4, 2005

Notable players

Oliver Kahn, intense Bayern Munich and national team goalkeeper came up through Karlsruhe's youth system and debuted with the Bundesliga side in 1990
Mehmet Scholl
Jens Nowotny
Thorsten Fink
Thomas Häßler
Edgar Schmitt
Marco Engelhardt
Clemens Fritz

Coaches

Hans Hipp - 16 October 1952 - 30 April 1953
Friedel Moser - 1 May 1953 - 30 June 1953
Adolf Patek - 1 July 1953 - 31 July 1956
Ludwig Janda - 1 July 1956 - 30 June 1959
Eduard Frühwirth - 1 July 1959 - 30 June 1962
Kurt Sommerlatt - 1 July 1962 - 26 January 1965
Helmut Schneider - 27 January 1965 - 18 October 1965
Werner Roth - 19 October 1965 - 1 November 1966
Paul Frantz - 2 November 1966 - 24 October 1967
Georg Gawliczek - 25 October 1967 - 8 February 1968
Herbert Widmayer - 10 February 1968 - 18 February 1968
Bernhard Termath - 19 February 1968 - 30 June 1968
Kurt Baluses - 1 July 1968 - 21 May 1971
Carl-Heinz Rühl - 1 July 1973 - 30 June 1977
Bernd Hoss - 1 July 1977 - 26 October 1977

Rolf Schafstall - 27 October 1977 - 15 April 1978
Walter Baureis - 1 July 1978 - 26 November 1978
Manfred Krafft - 1 July 1978 - 30 June 1981
Max Merkel - 27 November 1981 - 30 June 1982
Horst Franz - 1 July 1982 - 31 January 1983
Werner Olk - 1 July 1984 - 22 March 1985
Lothar Buchmann - 26 March 1985 - 25 April 1986
Winfried Schäfer - 1 July 1986 - 25 March 1998
Jörg Berger - 25 March 1998 - 25 August 1998
Rainer Ulrich - 26 August 1998 - 15 October 1999
Joachim Löw - 28 October 1999 - 19 April 2000
Stefan Kuntz - 1 July 2000 - 25 October 2002
Lorenz-Günther Köstner - 1 November 2002 - 20 December 2004
Reinhold Fanz - 28 December 2004 - 4 January 2005
Edmund Becker - 13 January 2005 - current

External links

German football clubs | Karlsruher SC

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