Wacky races in Germany

Wow, this is one strange Bundesliga season. Werder Bremen, by Christmas most people's favourites to lift the title, began the second half of the season by losing no less than three games in a row - and then drop additional points at lowly Gladbach due to a stoppage-time equaliser.

At the same time, the dynasty we affectionately refer to as 'Bayern' are beaten by Nuremberg and Aachen and then can't score against Bochum. Just 21 days ago, the team trailed Schalke by a whopping 12 points and coach Ottmar Hitzfeld declared: 'We are now playing for third place only.'

He wasn't kidding, you know, though I get the sneaking suspicion that Bayern may have the last laugh yet again. That's because Schalke, ravaged by a combination of injuries, nerves and lack of discipline, have collected only two points from the last four games - and we're kind of back where we started in late January.

At the top, that is. For the shenanigans in the drop zone are, if anything, even wilder. Mainz, certified goners in December, are rampaging through the league - or do you have a better term for 19 points from the past 8 games? And Hamburg have also come back from the dead, while Dortmund turned into sitting ducks since their win over... Bayern. Phew.

There are merely three points separating Frankfurt, in a relegation spot, from Aachen in 9th place. Such helter-skelter football is thrilling, but it makes commenting on anything a dangerous proposition.

Whatever you say could, no will be, reduced to absurdity by the next round of games. However, whilst desperately searching for something in our professional game that looks if not certain then at least probable, I hit upon a club in the Second Bundesliga. Telling you about them will also revive the series of profiles of lesser known teams that used to be so popular with readers who prefer grassroots to glamour. And so I will now opt out of the choas in the top flight and enlighten you about SC Karlsruhe.

If you read German papers, you'll find the name of the club given as 'Karlsruher SC', along the lines of 'Hamburger SV'. The suffix '-er' roughly translates as 'from', so Karlsruher SC is the sports club from Karlsruhe. Think Liverpudlian FC or something like that. I mention this because it often causes confusion in English-language publications when we're dealing with lesser-known teams. I have, for instance, seen references to the club 'Chemnitzer'. It doesn't exist. Either you say 'Chemnitzer FC', or you say just Chemnitz.

When German fans hear about Karlsruhe, they tend to immediately think of two other cities - Valencia and Munich.

It's important to note that we only rarely list Karlsruhe among our tradition-laden, truly legendary clubs. That's probably a mistake, though an understandable one, since the club as we know it today was formed only in 1952 and has collected only two major trophies - Cup victories in 1955 and 1956 - when the Cup was not yet the popular institution it would become in the 1960s.

But Karlsruhe, the city, played a hugely important role in the evolution of German football and was one of the very early hotbeds of the game. Karlsruher FV were formed as early as 1891 and quickly became one of the strongest teams in the land. In 1901, they beat the precursor of mighty 1. FC Kaiserslautern by a score of 29-0. And there was another excellent club, formed in 1894 and known as Phönix Karlsruhe. In 1909, Phönix won the national championship, a year later the title went to Karlsruher FV.

However, Karlsruhe lost its exalted position in our game after the first of the two World Wars. And after the second, in 1952, once-mighty Phönix merged with another club to become Karlsruher SC. It didn't help much, though, because while KSC were founder members of the new Bundesliga they never challenged for the league title, never stayed near the top of the table for too long, never grabbed the public imagination. Until the late 1980s.

By 1986, KSC were in the second division where they'd just had a so-so season with an average attendance of merely 5,100. On July 1, they signed Winfried Schäfer - yes, he of the famous hairdo - as new coach. In part, because he was a former player and popular with the dwindling number of fans. In part, due to his experience as a talent scout for Mönchengladbach. That's because he would be asked to do something similar in Karlsruhe: the club had run up ugly debts and were, under German FA regulations, not allowed to spend money on new players.

Schäfer's first season in charge could win you a pint down the pub. With this question: which team couldn't win any of its first three games and was beaten 8-0 (yes: 8-0, at Hannover 96) as late as mid-November, yet managed to win promotion to the Bundesliga?

Once in the top division, Schäfer weaved even bigger magic by finding and/or bringing up a plethora of talented players who would help keep the former yo-yo team up for ten long years. In 1993, KSC even qualified for the Uefa Cup and narrowly missed out on the final.

That European season brought one of the great nights in German football lore: on November 3, in the second round, Karlsruhe beat Valencia 7-0! Striker Edgar Schmitt scored four that Tuesday night - almost exactly a week after he had suffered a terrible car crash on the motorway - and became immortalised as 'Euro-Eddy'.

It was around that time that Karlsruhe started a project called 'KSC 2000', aimed towards establishing the club as a major force. However, there was a problem: the better you are, the more interested the big guns are in your players. Or let's make that 'the big gun'.

In 1990, Bayern Munich signed Michael Sternkopf from Karlsruhe. In 1991, they signed Oliver Kreuzer. In 1992 it was Mehmet Scholl. Schäfer managed to offset these losses, but Bayern had only just started: in 1994 they lured Karlsruhe's local hero Oliver Kahn from Baden to Bavaria, then Michael Tarnat and Thorsten Fink went south as well.

In March of 1998, Schäfer's twelve years at the helm came to an end when he was fired following a home loss against Hamburg that saw KSC drop to 16th place. There are still people in Karlsruhe who say it was a blunder, arguing that Schäfer would have taken the club straight back up again after a year in the Second Bundesliga. We'll never know. Needing just one point on the last day, KSC lost to Rostock and were relegated. In 2000, the club even sank to the third division for the first time in their history.

But in a couple of months, Karlsruhe could at long last be back: they are now at least eleven points clear of the non-promotion spots (depending on Monday's result), with nine games left to go. Even in a wacky year, that should be enough.

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Uli's seminal history of German football, Tor!, is available online.

Also available: Uli's new book Flutlicht und Schatten for all you German scholars to gen up on the history of the European Cup.

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