Abtswind

TSV Abtswind is the other club of note in the Kitzingen district, and for most of the rivalry's history the comparison did Abtswind no favours. A village side of roughly 700 people building a football club in 1956 was never going to keep pace with a bigger neighbour year after year, and it took more than half a century for that gap to close.

It closed in stages. The Bezirksliga title in 2010/11 got them out of the district leagues; the Landesliga championship in 2017/18 sent them into the Bayernliga, the fifth tier, for the first time in the club's history. For a team playing in front of 1,000 seats at most, at a ground sponsored into the name Kräuter Mix Arena, that promotion said more about the place than any friendly comparison to Aubstadt could.

The other habit worth noting is a taste for knockout football played after dark. Abtswind has taken the Fackelmann-Cup, the Wiesentheid midnight tournament, four times — in 2012, 2013, 2017 and 2018 — and added the Wiesentheid indoor tournament in January 2020. None of that carries the weight of a league table, but a club this size does not get to choose where it leaves a mark, and these are the games Abtswind keeps winning.

Mario Schindler is the name attached to both eras. He played for the club between 2008 and 2012, through the district-level years, then came back in 2018 as coach, after the promotion, to manage what the club had become rather than what it had been.