Kreuzlingen

Before the 1936 World Cup, Mexico's national team played a warm-up match on a pitch beside Lake Constance, in a small town most of the football world had never heard of. The same ground, then known as the Grenzland-Stadion, had already welcomed AS Roma, Everton and West Ham United earlier that decade.

FC Kreuzlingen, the home side, had been playing since 1 July 1905, working its way up from the lower divisions of Thurgau football. By 1934 it stood at the top of 1. Liga, then the country's second tier, with a place in the Nationalliga on offer. The club turned it down. The books would not stretch to a first-division campaign.

That refusal marked the high point. Kreuzlingen drifted back down the leagues after the 1930s, left its old ground in 1959, and settled at the Hafenareal from 1962, with one detour — a decade spent at the Burgerfeld between 1997 and 2006. Since January 2025 the Hafenareal has carried a sponsor's name, the EC TECHNIK REMU Arena, though it still holds only around 1,200 people watching on in green and white.

Returns to 1. Liga followed in 1981, 1989, 1997, 2012 and 2022, each eventually undone by relegation. The closest Kreuzlingen came to reaching the Challenge League, Switzerland's second tier, was a play-off in 2003/04. FC Baulmes stood on the other side of it and won. Promotion came another way in the end: in June 2025, Kreuzlingen went up into the Promotion League instead, one rung below the league that got away against Baulmes.