Kickers Viktoria Mühlheim
The FC Kickers Viktoria Mühlheim 1910 , often abbreviated as KV Mühlheim called, is a football club based in the Hessian town of Mühlheim am Main in Offenbach . The team, which was formed by the founding of FC Kickers Mühlheim in 1910 and has been playing under its current name since 1913, played in the top division for the first time in the years after the First World War and experienced another heyday between the mid-1960s and 1970s when one in the competed in the highest amateur leagues and belonged to the Hessen League from 1967 to 1971 . Most recently, at the turn of the millennium, the KVM attracted national attention with a four-year guest appearance in the Hessian Landesliga Süd (today's Association League Hessen ). The KVM was able to build on these successes in the 2012/13 seasons with the championship in the Offenbach regional league and in 2014/15 with the championship in the Frankfurt East group league. From 2015 the KVM played again in the Association League Hessen South. During the group league season 2016/17, the board of Kickers Viktoria Mühlheim decided to voluntarily relegate to the A-class. The Hessian Football Association agreed to the voluntary withdrawal, so that the KVM played in the A-League Offenbach since the beginning of the 2017/18 season. In the 2017/18 season, Kickers Viktoria reached second place in the A-League and was able to qualify through relegation to the district upper league with two wins against TuS Zeppelinheim and TV Dreieichenhain.
history
While football, which was imported from England, took hold in the cities of the Rhine-Main area before and around the turn of the century, it took a few years longer in the smaller towns for the first clubs to emerge. In Mühlheim am Main, the still young sport was first practiced in the sports club 09 , from which Viktoria split off in 1911 . Meanwhile, in 1910, FC Kickers was the first pure football club. The two teams finally merged in 1913 to form today's Kickers Viktoria Mühlheim .
For the first post-war season in 1919/20 , organized by the southern German association , the KVM was divided into the highest division, the Südmain district league, and met a number of well-established players there, including neighbors Kickers Offenbach . Still without a chance in this round, the team returned one year after relegation to the 1921/22 round in the then football upper house and was able to assert itself for another year in the second attempt. The playful means were not enough, however, to qualify for the new district league at the end of the 1922/23 season, with only one win from 14 games, the KVM finished last. A return to the top division was no longer possible for the Mühlheimers. In 1928/29 the Mainstadt team reached the promotion round to the district league, but ultimately failed because of the superior SpVgg Griesheim 02 .
After the end of the Second World War and the associated dissolution of the previous clubs, the Mühlheimer Sport-Union was founded in Mühlheim as a successor club and merger of the Free Gymnastics Association , which was banned in 1933 , the German Gymnastics Association and Kickers Viktoria . In 1948, the football team was promoted to the district class and then almost “marched through” to the highest Hessian national class. In 1952 it was decided to return to the traditional club name FC Kickers Viktoria . A return to higher-class football, however, did not succeed at this time, but the KVM increasingly developed into a talent factory for the then top German club Kickers Offenbach. Under Rudolf Keller from Offenbach, a team grew up at Kickers Viktoria that produced six players, Geo Kemmerer, Willi Kriegel, Friedel Scherer, Günter Rau, Heinrich Hofmann and Heinz Vogel, who later played higher class. The rise of KVM in the higher leagues took a while.
In 1965 they missed the qualification for the newly introduced group league, but were at least champions of the Frankfurt district class the following year. The classification in the middle relay of the group league instead of the geographically closer southern relay initially caused annoyance in Mühlheim, but then turned out to be a stroke of luck. Because the relatively long journeys to Central and Eastern Hesse ensured a hardly expected sporting high-altitude flight for the team supervised by the young and still inexperienced coach Benno Schweizer. At the end of the 1966/67 round, the team around captain and goalkeeper Hugo Schleicher, defender Helmut Sipple, midfielder "Benna" Fronia from the OFC and veteran Dieter Wöll in attack tied with TuS 06 Naunheim at the top of the table and led the way in the playoff more than 5000 spectators in the Hanauer Stadion Wilhelmsbad with a 3-0 victory the march into the Hessenliga perfect. In the top amateur class, coach Schweize was able to count on a well-rehearsed team, because with Sipple, who moved to Hanau 93, KVM only had to compensate for one loss, while Jürgen Klinzing from Sprendlingen and Gerhard Hofmann from Obertshausen were able to sign up two experienced workers. Promptly, the flight continued in the 1967/68 round, for long stretches of the season the Mühlheimers played in the top group in the Hessenliga and ended up in 5th place. With that, however, FC Kickers Viktoria had already reached the zenith of its possibilities. The squad was relatively thin, not least due to the limited financial possibilities, and player losses could not be replaced equally. In 1969/70 the KVM took another respectable 7th place under “homecomer” Geo Kemmerer, who had previously successfully looked after the SG Westend Frankfurt , but the following year, 1970/71, the class could no longer be held.
In the course of the 1970s, there was a crash into the minor leagues. Kickers Viktoria was able to hold its own in the group league until 1976, after which it fell back to the A-class. In the new, ultra-modern home on Anton-Dey-Straße, the neighboring SpVgg Dietesheim was only able to fill halfway, which at that time began to soar and played its top games in the Mühlheim stadium. At FC Kickers Viktoria, however, success did not return until the late 1990s. Under coach Karl-Heinz Pingel, the KVM succeeded in the second highest Hessian league, the Landesliga Süd (today's Verbandsliga Süd ). “In four to five years we want to be in the top again.” Announced the club chairman Markus Kinnel optimistically, and with the returnees Horst Russ (Offenbach) and Michael Osei (Aschaffenburg) they hoped to be able to implement this target. In 2001 and 2002 Kickers Viktoria Mühlheim took fifth place, but in the fourth national league year 2002/03 the high-altitude flight was over again, the KVM rose again to the regional league and has not reported back to higher-class football since then. After the 2004/05 season there was relegation from the county league to the A-class, but succeeded in the following year, the immediate promotion. After the 2012/13 season there was promotion to the group league Frankfurt Ost as champions of the Offenbach district league. In the 2014/15 season, he was promoted to the Verbandsliga Süd as champions of the group league Frankfurt East ahead of Germania Großkrotzenburg with 74 points due to the direct comparison won.
Venue
After the merger to form FC Kickers Viktoria , the club had its home at the "Rote Warte", which was completely forested at the time. In 1935 the company moved to a much more spacious area on Friedensstrasse. Today's stadium on Anton-Dey-Straße is comfortably equipped for regional league conditions. It has a covered grandstand with wooden benches, the spectator area on the back straight is built with a few concrete steps, and a running track runs around the field.
literature
- Walter Bauer: 100 years. An association in the heart of the city. FC Kickers Viktoria Mühlheim 1910 eV (Festschrift), Mühlheim 2010, without ISBN
- Hardy Greens : Legendary football clubs. Hesse. Between FC Alsbach, Eintracht Frankfurt and Tuspo Ziegenhain. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-89784-244-0 , pp. 279-280.