Kaiserslautern U19

Platz 7 at the Sportpark Rote Teufel is a modest ground in the Mehlingen-Fröhnerhof district, seating somewhere between 500 and 1,000, and it is here that 1. FC Kaiserslautern's U19 side plays, one rung below the senior club's Fritz Walter Stadion. The team carries Fritz Walter's name into its youth setup, a mark of the captain who led West Germany to the 1954 World Cup and never played for another club, and it competes in the A-Junioren Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal der Junioren wearing the same red and white, the same Roten Teufel nickname, as the first team.

The side's best season came in 1991/92, when it beat 1. FC Köln 5–1 in the final to take the Deutsche A-Junioren-Meisterschaft. Two of that squad, Thomas Hengen and Torsten Lieberknecht, went on to coach the senior team. A decade later, in 2002/03, the U19s beat Bayer 04 Leverkusen 4–1 after extra time to add the DFB-Pokal der Junioren, though finals since have gone the other way, against Köln in 2012/13 and against SC Freiburg in 2017/18.

The Südwestderby against Karlsruher SC is the fixture that matters most at this level, with 1. FC Saarbrücken standing as the other regional rival. The academy's pull beyond the region shows in who has passed through it: Kevin Trapp joined in 2005, and Willi Orbán arrived at the club at the age of four, both moving on to senior careers well beyond Kaiserslautern.

What the U19s still chase is a repeat of 1991/92, the one national title.