Germania Windeck drew the dream draw of all amateur clubs in 2010: FC Bayern in the DFB Cup. But the former glory has faded: The reality today is the Kreisliga C.
More than 40,000 spectators attended the first-round kickoff in the DFB Cup. Germania Windeck drew the big one in 2010, FC Bayern Munich. The home sports park was far too small to provide a worthy setting for the match. So the game took place in the Rhein-Energie-Stadion in Cologne. It was the highlight for Windeck – despite the 4-0 defeat.
It was a record for matches between amateur and professional teams in Germany until August 10, 2019, when more than 41,000 spectators watched the first-round match between Atlas Delmenhorst and Werder Bremen in Bremen.
In 2008, the club, which was called Germania Dattenfeld until a merger, qualified for the newly created NRW-Liga. In its premiere season, the club not only finished tenth but also won the Middle Rhine Cup, qualifying for the DFB Cup for the first time. Even then, the name of the opponent was big: Schalke 04. 0:4 was also the result in this match.
The club from the city of 18,000 played a pretty good role in the NRW league, narrowly missing out on promotion to the regional league in 2010. This finally followed a year later, when Blau-Weiß finished second behind Rot-Weiss Essen. Theoretically, at least.
The club’s success was planned by Franz-Josef Wernze and a long time ago. Patron Wernze, who died in 2023, finally decided in 2011 after 17 years to rather put his money into Viktoria Köln, which at that time had just been promoted to the NRW-Liga. Windeck then lacked not only the financial power but also the infrastructure to survive in the regional league. So the club gave up its right to promotion and even retreated to the Landesliga. Fortuna Köln moved up in its place.
Since 2017, things have been going steeply downhill for Germania: After a few years in the midfield of the Landesliga, the traditional club was relegated to the Bezirksliga in 2022. However, the club voluntarily withdrew to the Kreisliga B, because according to their own information, they could no longer even financially lift the Kreisliga A. This year, they were even relegated to Kreisliga C. With the departure from the supra-regional soccer ended in Windeck an era that is unparalleled in the Cologne area.
League, successes and well-known players
Current league: Kreisliga C Staffel 7 Kreis Sieg Greatest successes: Qualification for NRW-Liga 2008, 2nd place NRW-Liga 2010, DFB Cup participations 2009-2011 Known players/coaches: Heiko Scholz, Waldemar Matysik, Thorsten Nehrbauer, Markus Kurth