Kickers Offenbach

Offenbach am Main sits close enough to Frankfurt to live in its shadow, and for much of the twentieth century Kickers Offenbach was the answer to that. It grew out of a split from local sides Melitia, Teutonia, Viktoria, Germania and Neptun, whose players walked out and formed their own club at the Rheinischer Hof restaurant in 1901.

The high point came in 1970, when Kickers won the DFB-Pokal against 1. FC Köln while playing in the second division, a feat few clubs manage before or after. They had already been German runners-up twice, losing finals to Schalke 04 in 1950 and Eintracht Frankfurt in 1959. The 1970–71 Bundesliga season brought a darker distinction: club president Horst-Gregorio Canellas secretly taped bribes being offered to his own players.

Relegation followed anyway, and the response was defiant: Kickers went the entire 1971–72 Regionalliga Süd campaign unbeaten across 36 games. A second Bundesliga relegation in 1983–84 made them the first club to drop straight through from the Bundesliga to the third tier, and decades later a €9 million debt crisis cost them their 3. Liga licence and pushed them down to the Regionalliga. Sigfried Held's 133 appearances remain the club record, a reminder of how much this history rests on a small number of players staying put through the lean years.

What has not moved is the rivalry with Eintracht Frankfurt, played out as the Main Derby.