Stuttgarter Kickers

Stuttgarter Kickers is a German association football club that plays in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, founded on 21 September 1899 as FC Stuttgarter Cickers.

In its early years the club had a decent local squad that played in the Südkreis-Liga, Kreisliga Württemberg and then in the Bezirksliga Württemberg. With the reorganization of German football during the Third Reich in 1933, the team – now known as SV Stuttgarter Kickers – found itself in the Gauliga Württemberg, one of sixteen top tier regional leagues established in the country during that time. It continued to have good results locally, but was unable to impress beyond its own area. In the final year of World War II the Kickers fielded a combined wartime squad with Sportfreunde Stuttgart.

After the war the club resumed play in the Oberliga Süd and performed as a mid-table team early on. By 1950 it had slipped to the lower half of the table with a seemingly solid grip in 14th place, constantly struggling to avoid relegation throughout the decade. Kickers spent the early 60s in tier II football, but after the formation of the Bundesliga, Germany's new professional league, in 1963, the club was moved to the Regionalliga Süd. In 1974, that league went professional and became the 2. Bundesliga. Between 1963 and the late 1980s the team had varying results, but finally stabilized in the upper half of the standings toward the end of that period. It has one losing appearance to its credit in the DFB-Pokal in 1987 and in 1988–89 it made it to the Bundesliga for the first time. It ended a run of 28 years as a second division outfit. The team was immediately relegated after a 17th-place finish, but continued to deliver some of its best performances. Die Blauen advanced to the semi-finals of the 2000 DFB-Pokal and then