Frankfurt Kickers
The Frankfurter Kickers were a football club founded in the city of Frankfurt am Main in 1899 or 1900 , which soon after its founding made a name for itself as city and gaume master and produced the first Frankfurt national player with Fritz Becker . The Kickers only existed for about ten years, the club merged on May 7, 1911 with the Frankfurt FC Victoria 1899 to form the Frankfurt soccer club (Kickers-Viktoria) , which in 1920 became part of the gymnastics and sports community of Eintracht , which later became Frankfurt Eintracht .
founding
There are contradicting information about the exact founding date of the Frankfurter Kickers. The magazine Sport und Welt reported in November 1900 that a new football club called Frankfurter Kickers was established in June of the same year and that a general meeting was held on July 6, at which the board was elected. However, a pin made in 1909 with the inscription FUSSBALL Vr. Speaks against the founding year 1900 . Ms. KICKERS , has a "10" and the date "13.11.09". This means that it can be assumed that the tenth anniversary of the Kickers was celebrated on this date, which is also supported by a club newspaper from the year in which it says: “FV Frankfurter Kickers. The association was founded in 1899, primarily by seconds from the Adlerflycht- and Klingerschule. "
The Frankfurt Football Club was founded in 1899 in the Frankfurt district of Bockenheim , and games were played on the "Hundswiese". The pupils of the Adlerflycht- and the Klingerschule who played there gradually joined this game company. For the summer of 1899, two games of the game company against Victoria are documented, at a further meeting in September this team is called “F. Football Club 1899 (formerly Spielgesellschaft) ” .
On November 28, 1900, the Frankfurter Kickers and the Frankfurter Fußballclub 1899 merged to form the Frankfurter Fußballclub 1899 - Kickers . The club now provided three football and two rugby teams.
Game operations and successes
The teams of Frankfurter FC Kickers demonstrated their skill level in the very first matches : The first team beat a Mannheim team and the second team FSV Frankfurt . On December 9, 1900, a hit by Walther Bensemann secured victory over Viktoria 94 Hanau . A week later, the team achieved a sensation with a 2-0 win in the South German championship over FC Hanau 93 : for several years no Frankfurt team had previously managed to beat Hanau in 1893.
In 1901/02 the FFC 1899 Kickers took part in the championship of the Frankfurter Association Bund (FAB) for the first time and took second place behind Victoria. In the final round of the South German Championship, FC Hanau 93 took revenge and knocked out the Kickers 5-1. In the following season, however, was only in the semi-final game of the northern group after a 2: 3 defeat against FC Darmstadt over. In 1904 the Kickers , as they called themselves for the sake of simplicity since 1904, won all games against Viktoria, Germania Bockenheim and FSV and became FAB champions for the first time.
In the 1906/07 round of the southern German association, the Kickers won the championship in the Südmaingau class for the first time, but in the subsequent northern district championship, they only finished behind FC Hanau 93, Mannheimer FG 96, SV Wiesbaden and before Pfalz Ludwigshafen and Amicita Bockenheim fourth place. At the same time one had to struggle with financial difficulties from this season on after the treasurer had embezzled club money in the amount of 900 marks. Nevertheless, the Kickers won the championship in Südmaingau in the following season, but failed again in the northern district championship. The years 1904 to 1908 were among the most successful of the Frankfurter Kickers. With Fritz Becker , a striker from the ranks of the team was appointed for the first official international match of a German national team on April 5, 1908. Becker scored two goals in the 3: 5 defeat against Switzerland.
From the 1908/09 season , the Kickers presented themselves surprisingly weak. In this round it was a question of mastering the qualification for the single-track Northern District League planned for the following year in District 1 of the Northern District, which was achieved with third place behind the FSV and Viktoria 94 Hanau. In the new Northern District League, in which a changing Kickers team had to assert itself against strong competition, they finished sixth in the rounds of 1909/10 and 1910/11 .
After the championship games were over, the Kickers played friendly games at Phoenix Karlsruhe (0: 1) and Pfeil Nürnberg (2: 0) in the spring of 1911 . Then the merger with Viktoria Frankfurt was completed, under the new name Frankfurter Fußball-Verein the first game against Freiburg FC took place on May 7, 1911 .
Venues
One of the club's biggest problems was the lack of its own sports field. Initially, the "Hundswiese" was shared with other teams, when in the summer of 1904 they still had not found their own facility, a merger with FC Frankfurt 1880 was considered, which had just moved into a new facility at Louisa , but had problems with young players would have. A general assembly of the FFC 1880 rejected this merger, however, so that the Kickers on the Hundswiese remained neighbors of Germania and Victoria. When the association decided before the 1906/07 season to only allow games by the first teams on closed sports fields, the question of location arose again. A merger with Germania was vehemently rejected by the members, but an agreement was reached with the Germanic peoples about a temporary joint use of the fenced place.
In December 1907 negotiations were held with the Frankfurt Football Club, an association of merchants, to take over its place on Forsthausstrasse. This led to the desired success after the members had agreed to a meeting on January 10, 1908. As a concession for the provision of the venue, the club was renamed the Frankfurter Kickers football club and a member of the former FV Frankfurt was appointed 2nd chairman. However, the city's own square was in poor condition, so the Kickers did not give up their old location in Hundswiese.
literature
- Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and sky striker. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt . Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-89533-538-9 , pp. 25–32