1893, a struggle of the giants: Sunderland (74 UFCC title) against record world champion Aston Villa (102 titles)
Photo: Imago/Colorsport
Every football fan knows: The real happiness is devotion, not victory. No real fan will always want to win, because nothing is more intense than the smear, no event offers emotionally more than a bitterly crazy descent. And nobody envies the supporters of FC Bayern Munich, who no longer know the happiness of winning because the triumph has become routine. The individual victory in the individual game is hardly felt, at most the hoarding of points and titles causes a distant satisfaction, far away is the primeval experience of football with which it all started: two teams from two places compete against each other, you never know exactly how it comes, and those who score more experience experience the whole ecstasy of happiness. The Winner Takes it all.
That was once. The football success has long since hiked where there is no more excitement, but where the money is largely and expected: At the latest the invention of the Champions League brought the victory of the mammon through sport. Since the UEFA lifts absurd sums to the same clubs here, no real surprises are possible at the top. Large clubs such as FC Bayern, Real Madrid or Manchester City are no longer to be obtained, competition is only possible in locations such as Leipzig, Leverkusen or Wolfsburg, where the teams are only PR projects from world corporations and have gripped into the competition of the sports clubs.
So is football dead now? Well, fans know how and where they can get the true experience, they flock to their home club, such as the current master of the Regionalliga West, MSV Duisburg, which would be ready for time with 17,000 fans per home game in most countries around the world. Or the people go to Altona 93 in the Hamburgliga when cult club St. Pauli has become too commercial. So if the FIFA’s money has come up with a new insane project like a “FIFA Club World Cup” that lasts for a month and kicks between giga clubs from Europe and Tüdelt teams from the rest of the world, in the middle of summer, with the only meaning to shed over even more money-then do not even encourage themselves. The real football friend then goes to the homepage “Steve’s Fooie Stats Site” (Stevesfootballstats.uk), you can always go there without admission without advertising. This page of a soccer nerve is the home of the only true club World Cup: “The Unofficial Football Club Championship”. This competition has been running since November 11, 1871: Upton Park against Clapham Rovers. Zero to three.
This was a first-round match in the very first FA-Cup, over the thumb the first match between two football clubs in an official competition. Upton or Clapham, there could only be one, the players Kenrick (two goals) and Thompson made themselves as immortal as you can only make yourself immortal in a knockout game. Hopp or Top, The Winner Takes it all, whoever loses, cannot explain to the journalists: We have to park these mistakes until next week. Because there is no next week.
The first official club competition game was a knockout game that Clapham Rovers, if you just really want to believe in it, the first football kings of the world. Other competitions need a lot of cup rounds, need tens of play days, whole seasons until they have determined a winner. Not so the UFCC. It takes over the played, real results. But not their interpretation. The UFCC rejects all cup rounds and tables. Every game of the current champions is a final, a final fight: when are they beaten? No matter what competition, no matter against whom.
As early as December 1871, Clapham lost to hikers FC, who was able to defend his title for over two years, since he only lost a game in the FA Cup in January 1874, 0-1 against Oxford University, and so Oxford was the third club world champion in history.
Fantasy is important for fans. Usually they have more enthusiasm, but less movement than the football players themselves, so the imagination is kept up compared to the nasty material reality: delights the fan think back to the triumph of his club, which he did not experience himself. He plays through the remaining season in my thoughts until the end of the season, so that his own club still escapes descent as with a miracle. Fantasy football leagues are at thousands of millions of people hang in football management games on or offline, where they bring their club to the chance of success. Therefore, a mind game like “The Unofficial Football Club Championship” is also popular, an alternative history of club football that has enrolled into true history. She has the authority of over 150 years of history, and nobody has ever deserved a penny with it.
In the first few years she didn’t go far from the English Cup, the FA Cup. Because there were no other competitions yet. It became more interesting when the English Football League 1888 was founded. From now on there was a final every few days around the crown of the world (even if it was only perceived by the contemporary league game). The title, today Stoke, Everton, the Blackburn Rovers next week went back and forth, which could have been a little boring in the long run – but in the UFCC the dream of every football fans lives: How small your club is one day at the top! Because every reigning UFCC champion has a bad day. And when he takes the bad day in a cup game … against an opponent from a subclass league …
On March 6, 1937, Millwall was not only the first third-class team to ever reach the FA-Cup semi-final. Under enthusiastic hats swiveling of the 40,000 in the fully packed The Den den, Millwall also became the first third -class club world champion without knowing it, so that the title circulated for a few years in the exclusivity of the Division Three (South) in order to reach the first class again after the war.
Fantasy is what fans keeps alive.
The world title remained in Great Britain in the first decades, that is in the nature of the matter: if you first set up a league and cup company, you have the title. It was only in the 1950s that the football world knocked on the beyond the canal. There was now the European Cup and therefore the opportunity to lose the world title from the island in 1956. In 1956 the reigning UFCC champions of Manchester United only dealt with the RSC Anderlecht (2: 0 and 10: 0), then it was already narrow against Borussia Dortmund: 3: 2. A good two years later, the unthinkable happened: In the Gelsenkirchen Caunting Review, the UFCC champions of Wolverhampton Wanderers lost 1-2 against Schalke 04. And the next game lost the Schalke European Cup heroes, in the Oberliga West, 2: 3 at SV Sodingen. The world title was thus in Herne. He commuted in the Oberliga West for a while, switched to Hamburger SV for a short time and then disappeared in the Oberliga Berlin for a while.
Tasmania was world champion, Wacker 04 was world champion, the Spandauer SV was world champion, Hertha BSC, of course. And if the common football fan can rely on something, then on a cup bankruptcy of the Hertha: in August 1960 it sets a 0: 1 against FK Pirmasens, which caused the world title to switch to the Southwest Oberliga until the UFCC champions there were lost against an even more subclass club, the FVgg. Mainz-Mombach from the amateur league southwest.
Everything is possible! A victory, a good day form, two good grätschen, shot, gate, in! The extensive history of the UFCC has perceived many pious fantasies: everyone can be everything here, success is not to be bought, everything is related to everything. For decades, the title has migrated around the lower leagues, has been passed on by cup games, has been clapped in the European Cup by a team from a different country and then sunk again: the title of the entire 2010s was unrettable, as it seemed, in the depths of the French amateur leagues, until Paris St. Germain tore him up, just around him, just around Bayern To lose (Champions League final 2020), whereupon he ran in the Bundesliga for a while, in Hungary, Spain and Italy.
The UFCC has seen a lot, and yet the project is only at the beginning: there is still a whole world to play! The reigning champion is Borussia Dortmund, who torn the title in April with a 3-1 over Barcelona. On Tuesday, a new world is in the air: club World Cup, FIFA style. BVB opponent is fluminense. From Rio. For the first time ever, the world title could leave Europe in this game! And that is the only reason to be interested in this competition, the latest FIFA money machine.