Bundesliga newcomers SV Elversberg in '51' profile | OneFootball

In mid-September, the mighty FC Bayern will visit the town of Elversberg for the first time, with its population of 13,000 – the smallest Bundesliga club of all time. But there’s more that connects the two clubs than you would think. A walk through the village with some crazy encounters.

When the group meet for a barbecue in Ulrich Hönes’ summer house, everyone is wearing red and white. It’s obvious. At first glance, Walburga Müller doesn’t stand out in her red shirt; it’s only when you look closer that you notice the absence of the white and blue diamonds and the golden stars on the chest. The 67-year-old has been a member of the local FC Bayern fan club for many years, visited the Olympiastadion in Munich many times, regards Gerd Müller as “by far the best striker of all times” – but tonight she’s wearing SV Elversberg’s red away kit from last season. “What can I say? This club touches me,” she says. “It’s just a mad situation.”

Walburga is referring to the fact that FC Bayern are coming to Elversberg on 13 September. The German record champions against the Bundesliga debutants. The club of 430,000 members against the town of 13,000 folk. And yet the two clubs have more in common than you would think at first. SVE and FCB cooperate loosely in youth football. Bayern talents such as Paul Wanner have established themselves in professional football in Elversberg. FC Bayern partner Ursapharm is the main sponsor of SVE. And the chairman of the local FCB fan club really is called Ulli Hönes. People often say that football produces the craziest stories, but sometimes it really does go to extremes.

Elversberg is situated in south-west Saarland, 15 kilometres from Saarbrücken, 25 from France. You spend a good hour travelling through endless green hills – and then you don’t even realise you’ve reached your destination. The yellow place-name signs have been taken down again – a popular souvenir. The stadium is located on an industrial estate on the outskirts of town, next to a filling station and a supermarket. On a Wednesday afternoon in the summer break, the fan shop is fairly busy, offering shirts, flip-flops, barbecue tongs and panda dummies, all in the colours of black and white.

Town gathering in the stadium

On the stadium car park, which probably fits a few hundred cars, waits Ulli Hönes, 77 years old and chairman of the local FC Bayern fan club ‘Spieser Bazis’. It’s an almost surreal scene. The stadium capacity has just been increased to 15,000, construction machinery makes a noise, groups of fans take selfies. But there’s no train station in the area, no traffic lights or pedestrian crossings in front of the stadium, just a narrow bike lane next to the highway, wide enough for maybe three people to walk side by side. What will it be like when Bayern, Dortmund and Hamburg come to town soon? “Then it’ll be chaos,” says Hönes with a laugh. Finally, something’s happening around here.

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Everyone really does know everyone in Elversberg. Hönes greets the SVE groundsman, then he meets the mayor of Elversberg, who of course is a member of the FC Bayern fan club too. Bernd Huf is getting media enquiries from all around the world at the moment, with people wanting to report on the village club in the big league. “The club has grown faster than the surrounding area,” explains Huf. In 2021, Elversberg were still playing in the fourth-tier Regionalliga. He briefly leads the visitors through the building site. The north stand only exists on construction plans. Kane and Olise will have to get changed in containers. He points out the only VIP standing places in the league – with a patented holder for drinks and currywurst. There will soon be a business lounge right next to the dugouts at pitch level. “They certainly have good ideas,” says Huf, even if the sport club’s innovation makes a lot of work for him. The head of the town hall also has to handle logistics, transportation and public order on matchdays, which puts a strain on the budget. But: “The stadium will soon have more seats than we have residents – we’re throwing a real village fair every two weeks.”

A changing region

Hönes and Huf walk past the ‘Kaiserlinde’ (lime tree) that gave the stadium its unofficial name. The tree is not particularly impressive – the old lime tree was blown over a storm 11 years ago. But even small plants can grow. They climb the 17-metre-high Galgenberg Tower, from which you can look out over the hilly landscape. “Most of the hills have been built up with slag and waste rock from the coal and steel industry,” explains Huf. The town was only founded in the mid-19th century during the coal boom, grew rapidly and was at one time one of the most densely populated areas in Europe. From the tower, you can still see the region’s landmarks today: the Heinitz mine, an old steelworks and tall factory chimneys that no longer belch smoke. Many of the region’s automotive suppliers are also struggling. Many shops in Elversberg have closed, and unemployment is a good 30 percent above the national average. Can football spark a new boom? “For every euro that away fans spend in the stadium, they spend four euros outside the stadium on food, accommodation and entertainment,” says Huf. However, there are no large hotels in Elversberg, only a few restaurants and no nightlife. “It’s more the region that will benefit from the football boom, but for the people here, it’s very important to be able to tell a success story once again,” adds Huf. He gazes silently out over the town. Black-and-white flags can be seen everywhere in the gardens. All the electricity boxes are painted black and white – someone has to clean those as well. The mayor gives a wry smile: “At least the graffiti is slowly getting better.”

Only in Ulrich Hönes’ garden in the Spiesen district is a red and white flag flying.

The fan club meet in Hönes’ basement hobby room for every Bayern match. And of course, he can tell some wonderful anecdotes about his relationship with the “real Uli Hoeneß”, who he thinks highly of due to his cleverness and openness. Like the time when the WDR phoned him for a statement on Christoph Daum’s drug affairs. FC Bayern is no joke for him, though. He’s a lifelong Red. He vividly recalls his first visit to the then brand-spanking new Olympiastadion in early 1973, with the first undersoil heating in the country and the roof construction as airy and elegant as Franz Beckenbauer’s play. One day he watched a home win against Ajax; the next day he was back there in his work as a materials supplier, unloading the red soil for the Speedway World Championship.

There are 420 kilometres between Munich and Elversberg. Despite this large distance, there are many points of connection. There’s Hönes himself, who’s three years older than his more famous namesake and trained under later Germany coach Jupp Derwall at the Saarbrücken football school in the 1960s. There’s Klaus Müller, a tanned man in his mid-sixties, whose ramrod-straight posture still reveals that he was once faster and stronger than most. In 1987, he played for FC 08 Homburg in the Bundesliga. When FC Bayern came to Saarland in May, survival was at stake – against a side containing Matthäus, Brehme and Kögl who came under the cloud of the 2-1 defeat to Porto in the European Cup final in Vienna. “They were so good and fast, but you noticed that disappointment,” says Müller, who scored a goal in the 2-2 draw against Jean-Marie Pfaff. “That rescued our season,” adds the FCB fan, almost ashamed. “I even celebrated.”

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You find these stories everywhere in Elversberg. “Football connects everything,” says Hönes. And that’s probably what it is. The Bayern fans gaze up at the hot summer sky. In the past, when the nearby steelworks was in operation, the sky would glow red. “The Christ Child is baking biscuits,” they used to tell the children. But for more than 40 years now, the sky above Elversberg has been dark.

Franz Kutsch, an energetic man with glasses and an FCB cap, only drinks beer from the glass that he received when he left the Saar mine. “Good luck on  your final shift” it says on it. His former workplace lay up to 1,700 metres underground, one of the deepest pits in Europe. But so much for final shift – you’re a miner forever, says Kutsch. “The mine rescue service still gathers,” he says. “When everyone’s out, we go in.” The miners’ mentality still defines the region to this day: hard work, solidarity, community spirit. Sounds like a recipe for a good football team. It’s perhaps no coincidence that many legendary clubs, such as Newcastle, Liverpool, Schalke, Lens and Athletic Bilbao, originated from mining regions. Elversberg is new to these spheres. “But what they do makes sense,” says Kutsch. There’s no greater compliment in this region.

Staying grounded

Josef Welzmüller is reluctant to accept this praise. The 36-year-old Bavarian joined SV Elversberg as technical director in the spring after Borussia Dortmund poached his predecessor. “You normally come to a club when there’s a crisis,” says Welzmüller. However, Elversberg were among the leading group in Bundesliga 2 from Matchday 4 and finished in second place. Welzmüller enjoyed the momentum and “wanted to put his ego aside and not break anything at first”. He praises the humility and the hard work of the region and the club. “We’ve grown quickly on the sporting front,” he says. “In terms of infrastructure, all the other Bundesliga clubs are ahead of us. We’re working on that now.” As one example: the youth academy in Elversberg is not a building, but an organisational chart.

Welzmüller was a centre-back for Unterhaching for 10 years and once played against Elversberg in the Regionalliga relegation play-off (and won). Following the end of his playing career, he took on a dual role of defensive coach and technical director at Haching, taking an interest in the game on the pitch and the ideas behind the scenes. At the same time, the sports economist was completing his PhD at FC Bayern with a thesis on new markets in the global football industry. Now he feels very at home in modest Elversberg, and he believes that players such as Maurice Krattenmacher, who moved to SVE from FCB, also appreciate the special atmosphere. “We’re the best place for top young talents to take the next step,” he claims. And there have been many top talents who have proven that theory in recent years: Germany international Nick Woltemade played in Saarland until 2023. Paul Wanner doubled his market value to €8 million in the space of just six months in 2024. Striker Fisnik Asllani, who’s now attracting the interest of some of Europe’s biggest clubs, increased his by more than 500 percent. Such success stories make Welzmüller’s job easier, too. “The talents get an opportunity on the big Bundesliga stage here, but after the final whistle they also get their peace and a normal life,” he explains, pausing briefly. “It’s hard to lose that grip on reality in Elversberg.”

The thrill of the unknown

A quick survey of the Bayern fan club in Elversberg: who should win the first meeting between FCB and SVE? The result: 50 percent want a draw, 20 percent a Bayern victory and 30 percent are rooting for the Black and White – because “we’re so good and don’t need the points anyway”, as many say. Because the fairytale shouldn’t end. And maybe the mighty Bayern and the little Saarlanders are somehow related, as Ulli Hönes thinks: “At both clubs there's this family feel. 'Mia san mia.' And we are there for each other.”

The special atmosphere around the small lime tree delighted away fans in Bundesliga 2. All Elversberg-based Bayern fans talk of heartwarming encounters, spontaneous fraternizations and exclamations such as that of an exuberant Schalke fan: “This is what football should be like – I’m never leaving here.”

The reason for the euphoria that one senses, even on this ordinary Wednesday in the summer lull, is not down to any particular structures or spectacular fan displays. On the contrary, it’s to do with openness and emptiness – the absence of signposts, barriers and established rituals that steer football along fixed paths. In Elversberg, there’s no ‘That’s how we’ve always done it’. Because, after all, there’s never been anything like this before.

But how long can this novelty last? How long before a local rivalry emerges with Mainz, just a 90-minute drive away? In August, Saarbrücken ultras sprayed a large graffiti on a nearby motorway bridge: “Elversberg bleibt im Dorf.” (“Elversberg, stay in the village.”)

“I’d like nothing more than that. We want to remain a village,” comments Welzmüller. SVE’s small size is its superpower, says the technical director. “We have a lot of calm to think things through, while at the same time we have short decision-making channels. That leads to us making a lot of good decisions.” One of his main tasks is to “set the SVE momentum in stone”, he says. “Our playing philosophy, attacking bravely, clear position profile… We’ll always get coaches who want to play attacking football.” That way, the Elversberg DNA can be passed on, even when talented players, coaches and officials come and go. “We have a clear plan,” Welzmüller continues. It will be a great honour to play against the best teams in the country – “not because of a lucky cup draw, but week after week in the league”. Pre-season went well for Vincent Wagner’s side ahead of their maiden top-flight campaign, with a 0-0 draw against Real Mallorca, who had beaten Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 three days earlier. In the DFB Cup, they saw off MSV Duisburg in the first round. “I’m really up for causing a few surprises,” declares Welzmüller.

They have the opportunity to do just that on 13 September, when the German record champions come to Saarland. Ulli Hönes and his family will be there. It’s an evening game. It could well be that the sky finally lights up over Elversberg again.

Article taken from the September edition of FC Bayern magazine ‘51’.