This is a hammer! The current fourth-placed team in the Regionalliga West, 1. FC Kaan-Marienborn, is voluntarily withdrawing its team to the Kreisliga.
Just this week, Hajo Sommers, president of Rot-Weiß Oberhausen, had harshly criticised the promoted 1. FC Kaan-Marienborn.
Sommers told RevierSport: “They didn’t care. Both with the Klos or the press seats. But they still play in the league – and they do it well, because they put all the money into the squad and not into the infrastructure. We have also complained about that.”
What is meant here are the requirements of the West German Football Association (WDFV). These will be tightened again for the new season. Too much of a good thing for 1. FC Kaan-Marienborn.
Who on Thursday evening – 23 March 2023 – declared in a statement that the club will soon voluntarily give up the 4th league.
1. FC Kaan-Marienborn: From the regional league to the Kreisliga C!
“Due to the insurmountable hurdle that the WDFV’s much stricter regional league licensing requirements pose for 1. FC Kaan-Marienborn, the club from Breitenbachtal is taking a very difficult step and will completely withdraw its regional league team from playing after the season,” the Siegen-based club’s press release reads. This means that the second team, which plays in the Kreisliga C, will then become the 1st senior team of 1. FC Kaan-Marienborn. What a fall: from the Regionalliga West to the Kreisliga C!
The restriction to a single venue, the elimination of a drop-out stadium and the bitter realisation that the minimum requirements for a regional league licence cannot be met in Breitenbachtal, even according to expert assessments, moved the decision-makers of the football club, founded in 2007, to take this drastic step.
You get the feeling that there is an elitist group that wants to be among themselves. Our sporting successes this year seem to have startled one or two of them.
Florian Leipold
“It was a very difficult and sad decision for us, but in the end, unfortunately, there was no alternative. With the extreme and very sudden tightening of the licence conditions, the West German Football Association took away the basis for us to continue playing in the Herkules Arena. Kaan-Marienborn was and is our footballing home, with which we all feel connected, where we have achieved and celebrated incredible successes. The majority of our spectators also come from here. We couldn’t give up our sporting home,” says 1st Chairman Florian Leipold, explaining the initial motives.
A move to the Leimbachstadion, the home of Sportfreunde Siegen, was also considered and discussed internally, but finally rejected with reference to the club’s own sporting home. The move to the Leimbach Stadium would have involved considerable additional costs, as the costs for the Herkules Arena (financing costs, maintenance) would continue unchanged. In addition, there were doubts as to whether the natural grass pitch would be able to withstand a weekly home game if used jointly with Sportfreunde Siegen, or whether this would result in constant match cancellations.
After the possibilities were explored in talks with the city of Siegen, the Siegen-Wittgenstein police and the neighbouring club Sportfreunde Siegen, the club’s management, after consulting with the main sponsors, decided with a heavy heart to withdraw completely from the game. However, the board would like to emphasise that the three aforementioned parties were all willing to compromise and did not influence the decision to withdraw.
“Unfortunately, we have to realise that clubs like 1. FC Kaan-Marienborn are no longer wanted in the regional league. Our focus was to invest the available funds in sporting success and not in VIP seats. Unfortunately, the headwind to such a strategy has already become stronger in the course of the current season. In the end, it is a battle with windmills that we can no longer fight. In the 2024/2025 season, covered seats will be mandatory. By then at the latest, the topic of the regional league in the Herkules Arena would be over. Why a roof over the stands is more important than good football on the pitch is something that others will have to explain,” Leipold said disappointedly.
Leipold continues: “You get the feeling that there is an elitist group that wants to be among themselves. Our sporting successes this year have apparently startled one or two of them.
As part of the “Siegerländer Weg” project, the club has tried to combine education, career and football together with its sponsors since its foundation. Despite many positive examples of players who have found their way into professional life via the “Siegerländer Weg” and the club’s additional sporting success, the deregistration of the 1st team now also means that the “Siegerländer Weg” project is coming to an end. Here, too, the conclusion must be drawn that such a concept is not feasible in the regional league. Leipold looks back on the last few years after the decision not only with disappointment but also with gratitude.
“This was a very difficult decision after 15 years, but we can be proud of our years of sporting success. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all our advertising partners who have given us great support over all these years. I would also like to express our great respect and heartfelt thanks to all the volunteers who have carried us through the past years. We would like to thank all our spectators and fans from the bottom of our hearts for their support over the past years. We owe it to everyone to continue to show our best performance until the last match day and to say goodbye to the regional league with an excellent final result,” says the disappointed first chairman.
