SR Colmar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Logo of SR Colmar until 2016

Sports Réunis Colmar or SRC for short is a French football club from Colmar , a town in the Haut-Rhin department in the Grand Est region (until 2015 Alsace ). After the club went bankrupt in 2016 , it was re-established under the name Stadium Racing Colmar .

The club was founded in 1920 as Sports Réunis ; it emerged from the oldest local football club, the Association Sportive de Colmar , which had not been re-established after the First World War . As the name (dt. "Sportvereinigung", see below) suggests, other sports are also practiced; this article focuses on the Colmar footballers.

The club colors are green and white; the league team plays at the Colmar Stadium , which today has a capacity of 7,000. In 2010 the team was promoted to the third class national and was able to assert itself there until 2016. In 2016 there was a new start in the Excellence Haut-Rhin (seventh level nationally, regionally the second highest amateur league).

history

From amateur champions to professional football

In the years between the two world wars, SR Colmar only played in the amateur camp for many years and was at best number three in Alsace behind the big clubs Racing Strasbourg and FC Mulhouse . In 1931 he achieved first place in the Division d'Honneur , so he became an Alsatian amateur champion. In 1936 he rose to the second highest division in France and stayed in it until the outbreak of war ; through the financial support that his president Joseph Lehmann regularly gave the club, he assumed professional status in 1937.

1940–1945: SpVgg. instead of SR

With the western campaign of the German Wehrmacht and the de facto annexation of Alsace into the German Empire, the association was named SpVgg. Kolmar "Germanized" and now played in the top division of the 14a sports division, the Gauliga Alsace , but even under the umbrella of the DFB, he couldn't get past the rivals that were now known as the lawn sports club Strasbourg and the soccer club Mulhouse 1893 . In 1940/41 Colmar took second place in the Upper Alsace relay behind Mulhouse. A year later, in the now single-track Alsace division, the club came third and was able to leave its Upper Rhine rivals Mulhouse behind; it was followed by two fourth places. In the 1944/45 season , the clubs took from the city, which was particularly fiercely contested during the liberation - in addition to the SpVgg. was that still FC Kolmar - no longer part of the game.

1945–1949: four good years

Immediately after the end of the war, SR, as he called himself again, had the best sporting time: in the French Cup in 1945/46 the second division only failed in the round of 16 (to Racing Paris ), and in 1947/48 Colmar u. a. the FC Gueugnon with 3: 0 and Girondins Bordeaux with 1: 0 before the semi-final of the RC Lens the Alsatians with 5: 1 explained its limits. In the early summer of 1948, the SRC made the promotion in France's premier league as runners-up in Division 2 .

In the following season, the team trained by Charles Nicolas showed that they could keep up at this level; with Camillo Jerusalem , one of the many Austrians who switched to French professional football from 1932, Colmar had a recognized good game designer who was also an Austrian national player . SRC finished the season in 11th place and had not only overtaken their big rival Racing Strasbourg in a direct comparison (2: 1 and 0: 0), but also contributed to the fact that they landed on the penultimate place in the table and themselves could only hold in Division 1 through successes in the relegation games against second division clubs . In the home win against Strasbourg, 12,000 visitors set the attendance record that is still valid today. When this new Alsatian ranking was established, Colmar's patron and President Lehmann died in May 1949. The club did not want to embark on financial adventures, so surprisingly withdrew from professionalism and continued to play in the amateur field. Sports Réunis Colmar has not been able to leave this level since then, even though they were promoted to the third division in the 2010/11 season . Also in the Coupe de France , the national cup, there was only one time for something like a "memory of better times": In 1992/93 the club was among the last 64 teams, but that was also the end of the line.

League affiliation and achievements

SR Colmar had professional status from 1937 to 1939 and between 1945 and 1949. The club only played first-class ( Division 1 , renamed Ligue 1 in 2002 ) in the 1948/49 season, and also in Division 2 from 1936 to 1948 (interrupted by the German occupation in World War II) .

  • French champions : Nothing, the best position so far was table rank 11 (1948/49)
  • French cup winner : so far none, but semi-finalist in 1948
  • Alsatian amateur champions: 1931, 1973, 1978, 1997

Well-known players and coaches past and present

literature

  • Thierry Berthou / Collectif: Dictionnaire historique des clubs de football français. Pages de Foot, Créteil 1999 - Volume 1 (A-Mo) ISBN 2-913146-01-5 , Volume 2 (Mu-W) ISBN 2-913146-02-3 .