FC Saarbrücken

Two years later it took the name of the city rather than the district, and the club that began in 1903 inside Turnverein Malstatt has carried the city's name ever since.

What sets the club apart from most German sides of its age is a spell when it was not German at all. Under French administration after the war, Saarbrücken played in the French second division as FC Sarrebruck . The territorial question kept producing oddities: in 1955/56 the club entered the European Cup as the representative of the Saar, a separate footballing entity. Only in 1952 did it settle back into German competition, winning the Oberliga Südwest.

The modern club is defined less by its league position than by two cup runs. In 2020 it became the first fourth-tier side in the history of the DFB-Pokal to reach the semi-finals. The ground, first used in 1953, spent five years being rebuilt.

Money, not football, caused the sharpest fall. A financial crisis in 1995 pushed the club down into the Regionalliga, and the climb back has been made in stages — the Oberliga Südwest in 2009, the Regionalliga West a year later, the Regionalliga Südwest in 2018.

The nickname the supporters use, Die Molschder , is the local dialect word for Malstatt — the district the gymnasts came from, and the one the club has never stopped answering to.