With Preußen Münster, a founding member of the Bundesliga, is back in professional football. In the other regional leagues, too, well-known names have good chances of promotion.
On August 24, 2023, it will be 60 years since Uwe Seeler played with Hamburger SV in what is now a very old and very venerable stadium on Hammer Strasse. The hosts from SC Preußen Münster led up to the 86th minute on the first day of the Bundesliga game, when Charly Dörfel, Hamburg’s other star player, scored to make it 1-1.
HSV became the so-called Bundesliga Dino, which was only caught in 2018, the Prussians were relegated at the end of the first season and never made it into the top league again.
Now Münster is at least represented again in professional football, which officially includes the 3rd division under the umbrella of the DFB. The Prussians made the championship in the Regionalliga West already perfect on the 30th match day, after they narrowly failed at Rot-Weiss Essen in the previous season.
For more than a decade, the Essen team had been trying to get back up from the 4th league. Traditional clubs like the Offenbacher Kickers are trying in a similarly desperate manner, but they will fail again this season, as a look at the other four seasons shows.
Regionalliga Southwest
In the southwest, a former Bundesliga club still has the best chance of promotion. After 29 of 34 match days, SSV Ulm leads the table with a three-point lead over TSG Hoffenheim II. Again only one point behind is TSV Steinbach Haiger, who meets the leader at home on the last day of the game.
The people of Ulm had a wild time around the turn of the millennium. Coach Ralf Rangnick led you as a coach from the regional league to the second division and there in the 1998/99 season to the top group. Shortly before the end of the season, however, he followed the lure of VfB Stuttgart. Martin Andermatt took over, completed the mission, but was immediately relegated from the Bundesliga in 16th place.
After that it went downhill in no time. Another sporting relegation and bankruptcy followed. The SSV played in the 2001/02 season in the fifth league, the association league.
The game between SSV Ulm and Offenbacher Kickers on Saturday (04/30/2023) will be in the live stream at SWR be visible.
Regional League North
The North is fortunate this season that the champions are promoted straight away, which is always the case for the West and Southwest squadrons. Nevertheless, the champions could go away empty-handed, because table leaders Hamburger SV have not applied for admission to the 3rd division.
As a result, VfB Lübeck, second in the table, has the best chance of promotion, because there is only one competitor who applied for admission on time.
Stupid for Lübeck: It is third in the table with Hannover 96 II. Good for Lübeck: Lower Saxony are nine points behind and have already played 32 games.
Hanover’s second representation only has four games this season, while Lübeck still has six.
VfB will therefore most likely return to the 3rd division, from which it was relegated in 2021. Most recently, Lübeck played in the 2nd league at the local Lohmühle from 2002 to 2004, coach was Dieter Hecking at the time.
Regional League Northeast
The relay in the northeast is a treasure trove of traditional clubs, with five of them occupying the top five places in the table. Things are very exciting between the two leading clubs, as the table extract shows:
| Association | games | goal difference | Points | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1. | FC Energie Cottbus | 29 | +34 | 61 |
2. | Red and White Erfurt | 29 | +32 | 58 |
3. | Carl Zeiss Jena | 29 | +27 | 52 |
4. | 1. FC Lok Leipzig | 29 | +14 | 50 |
5. | BFC dynamo | 29 | +12 | 48 |
On the 32nd day of the game, the top game against Erfurt takes place in Cottbus. FC Energie, currently coached again by Claus-Dieter Wollitz, played six seasons in the Bundesliga between 2000 and 2008.
Bavarian regional league
SpVgg Unterhaching should hardly be able to take the championship away. Coach Sandro Wagner’s team, who will definitely be leaving the club at the end of the season, has a nine-point lead over the Würzburg Kickers.
Unterhaching, located south of Munich, played two seasons in the Bundesliga and made history in the process. In May 2000, Bayer Leverkusen only needed a draw in Unterhaching on the final day of the game to become German champions. But Leverkusen lost 2-0 at the Sportpark, partly due to an own goal by Michael Ballack.
The relegation
The champions from the Northeast and Bavaria squadrons play a promoted player to the 3rd league. The representative from the north-east will initially have home rights. Should Energie Cottbus become champions, the first leg would be on June 7th, because the club qualified for its state cup final, which like all the others was held on June 3rd on the “final day of the amateurs” and again live on the first and in the stream on sportschau.de will be seen. The same applies in the event that Jena surprisingly comes out on top. The second leg would then be on June 11th.
A relegation between two teams that are not in the cup final (which would be the case for Rot-Weiss Erfurt against SpVgg Unterhaching) would be played out on June 1st and 5th.