Spelle-Venhaus

What began as a single-village side out on the Emsland flatlands didn't stay that way for long. SC Spelle took shape on 19 January 1946, and within two decades had extended its reach to the neighbouring settlement of Venhaus, adopting the double-barrelled name it still carries, SC Spelle-Venhaus, from 1965 onward. The club plays in black and white, out of the small town of Spelle in Lower Saxony.

Its ground has changed names more than location: the Getränke-Hoffmann-Stadion was long known simply as the Stadion an der Venhauser Straße. How many it holds depends on who's counting — the club and the German Wikipedia put capacity at 4,000, while other listings give a narrower 3,700, a gap that likely comes down to how standing room gets tallied.

The two headline entries on the honours list both came in 2023: Spelle-Venhaus won the Oberliga Niedersachsen, the fifth tier of German football, and reached the final of the Niedersachsenpokal, losing that one 0-3 to TuS Bersenbrück. Two players who came up through the club, Christof Rekers and Wolfgang Schütte, went on to appear for VfL Osnabrück in the 2. Bundesliga; Merlin Schütte took the reverse route, joining Spelle-Venhaus after a spell at Jong FC Twente in the Netherlands. Osnabrück and Borussia Mönchengladbach have both since played friendlies against the club.

None of that draws quite the crowd that SV Meppen does. The two sides sit close enough on the map that their meetings go by the name Emsland derby, and when Spelle-Venhaus hosted Meppen in the Regionalliga Nord in October 2023, all 3,700 tickets sold out before kick-off.