FC Internationale Berlin

FC Internationale Berlin
Basic data
Surname	FC Internationale Berlin 1980 e. V.
Seat	Berlin-Schöneberg
founding	March 22, 1980
Colours	Blue-black
1. Chairman	Gerd Thomas
Website	inter-berlin.de
First soccer team
Head coach	Mario Jurcevic
Venue	Monumentenstraße 13 and Inter-Arena at Südkreuz
Places
league	State League Berlin 2
2019/20	3rd place

The FC Internationale Berlin 1980 e. V. is a football club in Berlin-Schöneberg with 1150 members. In the 2019/20 season, 16 adult and 30 youth teams took part in the game. In the 2020/21 season you play in season 2 of the national league.

history

The club was founded in 1980 in response to the increasing commercialization of Berlin football. The founders around Karl-Heinz Hamburger were vehement advocates of the amateur idea. Football - even more performance-oriented - should be played with passion and fun, not for money. Although this principle has been maintained to this day, the club plays with its first men's team in the Berlin state league. With more than 30 youth teams, the association now has the largest youth department in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district . The men's point games take place on Schöneberger Monumentenstraße, most of the youth teams play in the Inter-Arena on Südkreuz, Vorarlberger Damm 38, which was newly opened in 2012.

It is unusual that the club has refrained from sponsoring shirts to this day. Instead of an advertising message, the adults and young people play with the slogan “No Racism” on their chest. The club wants to send a clear signal against racism and right-wing radicalism. In addition, the association has been cooperating with refugee aid agencies, the Berlin workshops for people with disabilities and three schools since the early 2000s, and has been a member of the Südkreuz corporate network since 2017.

The more than 1100 members (including over 650 children and young people) include people from more than 50 nations. Looking at the roots of many children and young people, one would even come to around 70 different countries of origin. The association has been an "integration base" for young sports people in the Berlin State Sports Association since 2007. The youth department has been cooperating with 1. FC Union Berlin since 2015.

The club's own sports facility at Südkreuz was temporarily renamed the George Floyd Arena in June 2020 .

meaning

Intercultural integration in football

The special importance of this football club is not primarily in its particularly outstanding sporting achievements, but rather in the fact that the club tends to make purchases of international players in the football sector even when it was founded, when multiculturalism and integration were not discussed as socio-political issues the rarity were an international concept was propagated. Both the choice of name and the sporting practice in training and when putting together teams express this. This caused a sensation in sport politics in West Berlin , where the club was founded. "Sports officials from the Landessportbund and the then Association of Berlin Ball Sports Clubs (VBB) found the name 'Internationale' offensive, because of the 'e' it had a 'communist overtone' at the end" ( Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 1, 1982). Various expressions of solidarity, also from professionals like Ewald Lienen , ultimately successfully supported the naming. Today the association has members in committees of the Berlin Football Association and critically accompanies the development of amateur and youth football - especially the increasing flow of money and the influence of wealthy individuals - which is also repeatedly made clear in publications.

Sport policy debates

The club deliberately organized football tournaments that were intended to promote international understanding. An example of this are invitations from amateur teams from the Eastern Bloc to a peace tournament at Easter 1982, that is, at the time of the arms race and the peace movement articulating in resistance to it. This sparked once again the sport-political debate within the Federal Republic of Germany as to whether and to what extent sport clubs and sport should interfere in political issues. From the official association side it says: “The way to peace cannot lead through the sports field.” The association organizes the “Inter-Kultur-Cup”, a tournament for children, young people and adults of various origins, inclinations, denominations and cultural background. The association has hosted the Berlin championships for workshops for disabled people since 2013. In 2016, the “Berlin Football and Society Network” was founded together with several soccer NGOs (streetfootballworld, RheinFlanke, buntkicktgut, Amandla, Fußball Grenzenlos and others). In 2019, 25 years of anti-racist engagement were celebrated with the NO-RACISM-CUP of the girls and women department.

Promotion of women's football and equality

The signing of Mirjana Kovacev as a coach in 1997 caused a national sensation. For the first time in the history of German football, a woman coached a male national league team in the 1997/98 season. And Uli Hoeneß teased the morning magazine: “Where does she go to take a shower?” The D-girls won the 2006 Berlin championship and the cup.

Prizes and awards

• Appointment by the state sports association as an integration base (since 2006)
• Triple win of a bronze or silver star for integration and youth work (2006, 2008 and 2009)
• Winner of the Sepp Herberger Prize for exemplary youth work (2006)
• Integration award from the Berlin Football Association (2009)
• Mete Eksi Prize (2009)
• Band for Courage and Understanding (2010)
• Innovation Award of Berlin Sports (2011)
• Eberhard Bernatzky Prize of the Berlin Football Association for exemplary youth work (2012)
• DFB Science Award for Men's Trainer Georg Froese (2013)
• Integration award of the DFB and Mercedes-Benz (2013)
• Prize of the Berlin Football Association for social and social commitment (2014)
• Ambassador for Democracy and Tolerance (2015)
• Big Berlin Star of Sports in Silver (2016)
• Sports Star in Gold (2017)

Cooperation partner

• Integration through sport - official base since 2006 (program of the DOSB and the Federal Minister of the Interior)
• 1. FC Union Berlin and SV Babelsberg 03
• Several schools in Schöneberg and Kreuzberg (football clubs, work with refugees)
• Sports-oriented Otto Hahn High School Neukölln
• Berlin workshops for people with disabilities - Berlin master 2012–2016, German master 2016 (training)
• Refugee project "Champions Without Borders Kids" (training)
• Refugee program "International Competence" (training with young people)
• Rheinflanke Berlin gGmbH (recognized youth welfare agency)
• Berlin network football and society (network of initiatives, clubs and associations)

titles and achievements

• 2006: Winning the Berlin championship and the D-Juniors Cup.
• 2005: Promotion of the D-Juniors and 2007 of the C-Juniors in the Association League.
• 2009: Promotion of the B-Juniors D-Juniors to the top division of Berlin, the Association League.
• 2011: Women's promotion to the national league
• 2013: Berlin runner-up in the indoor B-Junior Championship
• 2013: Women's promotion to the association league
• 2013: Promotion of the men to the regional league
• 2014: Promotion of the men to the Berlin League
• 2015: Promotion of the A and B juniors to the Association League Berlin
• 2016: Promotion of the over 60s in the Association League Berlin
• 2017: 3rd place of the over 60s in the Association League Berlin
• 2017: The younger C-Juniors won the Berlin championship
• 2018: Quarter-finals in the Berlin Men's Cup
• 2019: Winner of the Berlin championship by the over 60s, which relegated Hertha BSC to second place in the association league.

Web links

• Website of the FC Internationale Berlin
• Gerd Thomas (FC Internationale Berlin 1980) on the fight against racism in football. In: doppelspitze.podigee.io , June 15, 2020.
• Amateur clubs want to modernize the Berlin Football Association . In: berliner-zeitung.de , November 11, 2019.
• FC Internationale Berlin - everyone is equal in sport. In: berlin.de .

Individual evidence

1. ^ The 1.FC Union Berlin eV and the FC Internationale 1980 eV cooperate. Retrieved June 28, 2020 . 
2. ↑ cf. Tagesspiegel report from February 25, 2007
3. ↑ Article in the Frankfurter Rundschau of April 1, 1982 ( Memento of December 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 447 kB)
4. ↑ Announcement of the German Olympic Sports Confederation of February 9, 2007  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from May 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ http://www.fussball.de/georg-froese-torjaeger-und-elfmeterforscher/id_63022562/index
8. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/sport/berlinsport/fc-internationale-dfb-integrationspreis-fuer-berliner-fussballklub/7995048.html
9. ↑ 11. https://www.berliner-volksbank.de/wir-fuer-sie/presse/pressemitteilungen-2016/sterne-des-sports-2016-silber-internationale.html
10. ↑ Table women Landesliga - Berlin - women: The table for the 2012/13 season at Fussball.de (accessed on July 17, 2013)
11. ↑ Table Bezirksliga - Bezirk Berlin - Men: The table for the 2012/13 season at Fussball.de (accessed on July 17, 2013)
12. ↑ Table Landesliga - District Berlin - Men: The table for the 2013/14 season at kicker.de (accessed on July 31, 2014)