Located just a few kilometers from the French border, the former steel and beer town of Saarbrücken has rarely enjoyed top-flight football matches over the past 30 years.
However, the famous "Pokal" or the German Cup was a special story for the city and the club that was founded exactly 120 years ago - in the recent "corona season" as a fourth division Saarbrücken reached the semi-finals of the Cup, and last night he directed a bigger sensation than that.
The club, which in the meantime jumped from the fourth tier of German football to the third, in the round of 2 eliminated the team that is a symbol of football in that country, the giant and seemingly untouchable favorites Bayern Munich - 1:XNUMX.
The boys of Ridiger Ciel, a gentleman who, in addition to managing Saarbrücken, also works as a kindergarten teacher, achieved victory over Bayern with a goal by Marcel Gauss in the 96th minute.
Apart from the mentioned two results in the Cup, everything else great that Saarbrücken did is related to distant history, so the club from the federal state of Saarland was the vice-champion of Germany in 1943 and 1952.
When it comes to history, this club has many stormy periods behind it.
Thus, after the Second World War, the Saarland area was under the control of France, so Saarbrücken, as an exile, had to play matches in a neighboring country. However, in 1952 there was a return to Germany, and in the same year the club from the Saar River played the final match for the championship against Stuttgart, which they lost in front of almost 90.000 spectators in Ludwigshafen.
The following years were not very successful, but in 1963, when the Bundesliga Saarbrücken was born - surprisingly for many at the time - he received an invitation to be a part of history and a member of the elite during the inaugural season. The German media write mostly thanks to Hermann Neuberger, then an influential football official, and later the long-term president of the German Football Association.
However, a modest team made Saarbriken a convincing last and immediately relegated.
Through the following decades, the "blue and black" knew how to return to the Bundesliga from time to time, and the last time was in 1993. Two years after that, due to the Finnish crisis, they ended up in the lower leagues and since then they mostly "wander" from the second to the fifth tier of the German league. football.
Nights in the Cup, like the one with Bayern or three years ago when they reached the semi-finals and the match against Bayer Leverkusen, are still a special story, something that will be talked about for a long time on the docks of the Saar River.
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