Karlsruher SC
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- For other uses, see Karlsruher SC (disambiguation)}}}.
Karlsruher Sport Club is a German football club, based in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg. The club rose out of the mergers of a number of predecessor clubs.
History
A succession of mergers
The most successful of these ancestral clubs was FC Phönix, formed in 1894. They quickly became a strong regional side and in 1909 defeated defending champion Viktoria Berlin (4:2) to capture the national title. Phönix merged with FC Alemannia in 1912 to form KFC Phoenix (Phoenix Alemannia). The team slipped from upper league competition until 1936, when after a remarkable season in which they won 30 of 34 games, they earned admission to the Gauliga established under the Third Reich. From 1943 to 1945 the club played with Germania Durlach as the combined wartime side Phoenix/Germania Karlsruhe.Two other threads in the evolution of KSC were the formation of FC Mühlburg in 1905 out of 1. FV Sport Mühlburg (1890) and Viktoria Mühlburg (1892), and the merger of FC Germania (1898) and FC Weststadt (1902) to form VfB Karlsruhe in 1911. FC Mühlburg and VfB Karlsruhe would in turn merge to form VfB Mühlburg in 1933. The group of clubs which came together to form VfB Mühlburg were an undistinguished lot, sharing just one season of upper league play between them. The new side, however, played its way into first level football immediately after World War II.
The formation of Karlsruher SC
KFC Phoenix (Phoenix Alemannia) and VfB Mühlburg united to form the current club, Karlsruher Sport-Club Mühlburg-Phönix e.V., in 1952. The team had good results throughout the remainder of the decade: in 1955, they beat FC Schalke 04 (3:2) to win the German Cup, and repeated the next year with a 3:1 win over Hamburger SV. That season they also made an appearance in the national final, which they lost 2:4 to Borussia Dortmund. The KSC was Oberliga Süd champion in 1956, 1958, and 1960, as well as runner-up in the German Cup in 1960. Their record earned them admission as one of sixteen founding clubs into Germany's new professional football league, the Bundesliga, when it began play in 1963.Karlsruhe struggled in the top flight, never managing better than a 13th place finish over five seasons before finally being demoted to Regionalliga Süd (II). Over the next three seasons the team earned a first and two second-place finishes there, but were unable to advance in the promotion rounds. Only after the formation of the Second Bundesliga did a first place finish in 1975 enable them to return to the top flight. The club would spend the next dozen seasons bouncing back and forth between the first and second tiers.
The Schäfer era
Under the guidance of new coach Winfried Schäfer, the KSC returned to the Bundesliga for an eleven-year turn beginning with the 1987-88 season, and for the first time managed to work their way out of the bottom half of the league table. In 1994, the club had a successful run in the UEFA Cup, going out only in the semi-final on away goals against Austria Salzburg after beating, in turn, PSV Eindhoven, Valencia CF, Girondins Bordeaux, and Boavista Porto. Their stunning 7-0 second-round victory over then-league leader Valencia might be considered the high point of the club's history in its centennial year. Between 1992 and 1997, the club was ranked in the single digits in six consecutive Bundesliga seasons and also participated in two more UEFA Cups, reaching the 3rd round both in 1997 and 1998. As the millennium drew to a close, Karlsruhe faded. Schäfer was fired, but this did not keep the club from slipping to the 2nd Bundesliga in 1998 and in 2000 to regional, third-tier football (Regionalliga Süd) by a last place finish and dire financial circumstances. They have since returned to the 2nd Bundesliga, but remained mired in the bottom half of the league table before moving back into contention for promotion during the 2005-06 season.Honours
- German Champions: 1909
- German Vice-champions: 1956
- German Cup: 1955, 1956
- German Cup finalist: 1960, 1996
- UEFA Cup: 1994 (semi finals), 1997 (3rd round), 1998 (3rd round)
- UEFA Intertoto Cup: 1996
2005/06 Squad
As of December 4, 2005
Notable players
- Oliver Kahn, intense Bayern Munich and national team goalkeeper came up through Karlsruhe's youth system and debuted with the Bundesliga side in 1990
- Mehmet Scholl
- Jens Nowotny
- Thorsten Fink
- Thomas Häßler
- Edgar Schmitt
- Marco Engelhardt
- Clemens Fritz
Coaches
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External links
| German 2. Bundesliga Football Clubs (2006-07) |
| 1860 Munich | FC Augsburg | Carl Zeiss Jena | MSV Duisburg | Eintracht Braunschweig Erzgebirge Aue | Freiburg | Greuther Fürth | Hansa Rostock | Kaiserslautern | Karlsruhe Kickers Offenbach | Koblenz | FC Köln | Paderborn 07 | Rot-Weiss Essen | Unterhaching Wacker Burghausen [http://encycl.opentopia.com/ edit]
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| German Regionalliga Süd Football Clubs (2006-07) |
| VfR Aalen | SpVgg Bayreuth | SV Darmstadt 98 | SV Elversberg | KSV Hessen Kassel TSG Hoffenheim | FC Ingolstadt 04 | 1. FC Kaiserslautern II | Karlsruher SC II Bayern Munich II | FK Pirmasens | SC Pfullendorf | SSV Reutlingen | 1. FC Saarbrücken Sportfreunde Siegen | Stuttgarter Kickers | VfB Stuttgart II | SV Wehen [http://encycl.opentopia.com/ edit]
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