Union Niederrad
The FC Union Niederrad 07 is a 1907 established football club based in the Frankfurt district of Niederrad . The team was temporarily the third strongest force in Frankfurt football in the 1920s and 1930s and belonged to the top German league, the Gauliga Südwest and from 1941 the Gauliga Hessen-Nassau , for several years between 1934 and 1944 . After the re-establishment in 1945/46, FC Union played in the upper amateur leagues for a few years, but slipped into the lower classes in the 1970s. Apart from a one-year guest appearance in the Hessian state league in 1989/90, FC Union Niederrad has since played in the classes of the Frankfurt soccer district.
history
Foundation and early days
FC Union Niederrad was founded on July 22nd, 1907. At this point in time, the first football clubs from other parts of Frankfurt had already existed for several years and had already gained competitive experience in the first rounds of the championship of the South German Football Association and the Frankfurter Association Bund . Therefore, in the first years of its existence, FC Union was unable to compete against established forces such as Germania 1894 , FSV , FC Viktoria and FFC Kickers - the latter two merged in 1911 to form FFV Kickers-Victoria , from which Eintracht emerged in 1920 keep up.
Success from the 1920s and 1930s
This changed after the First World War, when Union developed into one of the strongest and most popular teams in the region. In the 1920s and 1930s, initially the FSV and later, more and more, the Eintracht dominated football events in the city. After the Niederräder, since 1924/25 in the top division, represented the district league Main, but at the end of the 1925/26 season by a 6: 3 victory (after 0: 3 deficit) over Eintracht, they just escaped relegation a very successful phase for Union in the following years. In 1928 the coach William Townley from England was hired , who had previously looked after numerous well-known German clubs and had led the Karlsruhe FV (1910) and the SpVgg Fürth (1914) to the championship in the pre-war years. The club could only afford his commitment financially for 15 months, but Townley's work also bore fruit beyond his tenure: Between 1928 and 1933, FC Union always ranked 4th or 3rd in the district league at the end of the round and qualified for the finals in 1929 and 1931 for the South German Championship.
When the Gauligen were introduced as the new top division in 1933 , Union Niederrad was initially left out. Only two Frankfurt clubs, the FSV and the Eintracht, were divided into the Gauliga Südwest . But already in the following year Union prevailed in the district class and the subsequent promotion round and belonged to the top division from the 1934/35 season . In the league, which is made up of well-known clubs such as Kickers Offenbach , 1. FC Kaiserslautern and Wormatia Worms , Union was not only able to hold its own, but at the end of the first season was even one place ahead of the great Eintracht. The fact that the Frankfurt competitors could not stand up to their competitors in the long term was primarily due to the money: while the FSV and Eintracht were able to attract talent from all over southern Hesse to the Main thanks to their sponsors, in Niederrad you could only get your own offspring build up. Nevertheless, Union was able to stay in the Gauliga for a long time. After three years, the team had to leave the upper house as ninth in the table, but returned to the Gauliga Südwest two years later, in 1939, and was able to hold out in the Gauliga Hessen-Nassau, which was introduced in 1941, until the last season of 1943/44 . In 1944, Union formed a war gaming community with the Frankfurt FV Sportfreunde 04 , but it is not known whether there was any gaming operation at all in 1944/45.
Athletic decline in the post-war period
After the end of the war and the dissolution of all clubs by a resolution of the Allied Control Council, at the behest of the American military administration in Frankfurt, initially only "sports communities" were allowed, in which all former clubs of a district were to be combined. Therefore, Union was re-established in 1945 as SG Niederrad , but returned to the old club name the following year after this regulation was dropped again.
In terms of sport, the team was no longer in the top leagues. The new top division, the Oberliga Süd , now encompassed the entire south, from Frankfurt, as with the introduction of the Gauligen, only two teams were divided, and they were called Eintracht and FSV as they were then. Union could not prevail in the first second-rate national league or from 1950 third-rate amateur league and rose in 1959 for the first time in the second amateur league and thus in the fourth class. After all, in these years the club produced a youth national player, Wolfgang Solz , who later made numerous league appearances at Eintracht and even played on an international level in the trade fair cup and two appearances in the national team. Union, on the other hand, had to struggle more and more with financial problems that went hand in hand with the sporting decline. In 1972 they found themselves in the A class for the first time and two years later in the B class, at the same time the now dilapidated main grandstand had to be demolished.
After the return to the A-Class in 1976 and in the 1980s, things seemed to be looking up. In 1984 ex-professional "Schotte" Trimhold took over the training at Union and they barely missed promotion to the district league twice. Under another former Bundesliga player, Walter Krause , the promotion finally succeeded and in 1989 Union even returned to the national league for a year. Since then Union has been playing in the classes of the Frankfurt soccer district.
Venue
FC Union Niederrad plays its home games on the Heinrich-Seliger-Straße sports field , an artificial turf pitch. During the heyday of the club (1941) the former stadium Güntherstraße , as the street was called earlier, held 12,000 spectators. However, the stately main stand fell into disrepair in the post-war period and was finally demolished in the 1970s.
literature
- Hardy Greens : Legendary football clubs. Hesse. Between FC Alsbach, Eintracht Frankfurt and Tuspo Ziegenhain. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-89784-244-0 , pp. 284-285.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Greens, The big book of German football clubs , Kassel 2009, p. 354