Alternative history | FK Pirmasens rule the world

Every football fan knows: true happiness lies in dedication, not victory. No true fan will always want to win, because nothing is more intense than destruction, no event offers more emotional impact than a bitterly mourned relegation. And no one envies the supporters of FC Bayern Munich, who no longer know the joy of victory because triumph has become routine to them. The individual victory in an individual game is barely felt anymore; at most, the hoarding of points and titles evokes a distant satisfaction; far away is the primal experience of football with which it all began: two teams from two places compete against each other, you never know exactly how it will turn out, and whoever scores one more goal in the end experiences the full ecstasy of happiness. The winner takes it all.

That was once upon a time. Football success has long since migrated to places where there is no longer any excitement, but rather to places where money flows in large quantities and predictably: The invention of the Champions League, at the very latest, has brought about the triumph of Mammon over sport. Since UEFA has been dumping absurd sums on the same clubs over and over again, real surprises at the top are no longer possible. Big clubs like FC Bayern, Real Madrid, or Manchester City can no longer be caught; competition is only possible in the long term in locations like Leipzig, Leverkusen, or Wolfsburg, where the teams are merely PR projects for global corporations and have wormed their way into the competition among sports clubs with endless cash.

So, is football dead? Well, fans know how and where to get the real experience. They flock to their hometown club in droves, like the current champions of the Regionalliga West, MSV Duisburg, who, with 17,000 fans per home game, would be top-flight worthy in most countries around the world. Or people go to Altona 93 in the Hamburgliga when cult club St. Pauli has become too commercial for them. So when the money-spinners at FIFA come up with a new, crazy project like a "FIFA Club World Cup," supposed to last a month and feature kick-offs between mega-clubs from Europe and shabby teams from the rest of the world, in the middle of summer, with the sole purpose of shoveling even more money over to the mega-clubs and FIFA—then the experts don't even get upset. The true football fan simply goes to the website "Steve's Footie Stats Site" (stevesfootballstats.uk), where you can always go, with no entry fee and no advertising. This football nerd's site is home to the only true Club World Cup: "The Unofficial Football Club Championship." This competition has been running since November 11, 1871: Upton Park versus Clapham Rovers. 3-0.

This was a first-round match in the very first FA Cup, roughly the first match between two football clubs in an official competition. Upton or Clapham, there could only be one, and players Kenrick (two goals) and Thompson made themselves as immortal as one can only make one in a knockout match. It's all or nothing, the winner takes it all. Whoever loses can't explain to the journalists: We have to fix these mistakes by next week. Because there is no next week.

The first official club competition was a knockout match, and Clapham Rovers, if you really want to believe it, were the first football kings of the world. Other competitions require many cup rounds, countless matchdays, entire seasons, before they finally determine a winner. Not so the UFCC. It accepts the actual results, but not their interpretation. The UFCC rejects all cup rounds and league tables. Every match between the current champions is a final, a final battle: When will they be beaten? No matter what competition, no matter who they're playing against.

As early as December 1871, Clapham lost to Wanderers FC, who had defended their title for over two years since they had only lost another FA Cup match in January 1874, 1-0 against Oxford University, and so Oxford became, if you can believe it, the third club world champion in history.

Fantasy is important for fans. They are usually more enthusiastic but less active than the football players themselves, which is why fantasy is held in high esteem compared to the dull material reality: The fan reminisces with delight about his club's triumphs, which he never experienced himself. He plays the rest of the season through to the end in his mind, so that his own club, as if by a miracle, escapes relegation. There are thousands of fantasy football leagues, and millions of people are addicted to football manager games online or offline, where they guide their club to success. This is why a fantasy game like "The Unofficial Football Club Championship" is so popular: an alternative history of club football that has become part of true history. It has the authority of over 150 years of history, and no one has ever earned a penny from it.

In the early years, it didn't stray far from the English FA Cup. There were no other competitions yet. Things got more interesting with the founding of the English Football League in 1888. From then on, there was a final for the world title every few days (even if contemporaries perceived it as just another league game). The title went back and forth: today Stoke, tomorrow Everton, next week Blackburn Rovers. That could have gotten a bit boring in the long run – but in the UFCC, every football fan's dream lives on: no matter how small their club, they could one day be at the very top! Because every reigning UFCC champion has a bad day now and then. And if they take that bad day in a cup match… against an opponent from a lower league…

On March 6, 1937, Millwall not only became the first third-tier team ever to reach the FA Cup semi-finals, but amidst the enthusiastic cap-waving of the 40,000 fans in a packed The Den, Millwall also unknowingly became the first third-tier club world champions. The title remained in the exclusive domain of Division Three (South) for several years, only to return to the top flight after the war.

Imagination is what keeps fans alive.

The world title remained in Great Britain for the first few decades, as is only natural: whoever sets up a league and cup competition first gets the title. It wasn't until the 1950s that the football world across the Channel came knocking. The European Cup was now available, and with it the possibility of the 1956 world title being stolen from Great Britain. In 1956, the reigning UFCC champions Manchester United first faced RSC Anderlecht (2-0 and 10-0), before losing a close game against Borussia Dortmund, 3-2. A good two years later, the unthinkable happened: at Gelsenkirchen's Glückaufkampfbahn, the UFCC champions Wolverhampton Wanderers lost 2-1 to Schalke 04. And then the Schalke European Cup heroes lost their very next game, in the Oberliga West, 2-3 to SV Sodingen. The world title thus rested in Herne. He moved around the Oberliga West for a while, briefly moved to Hamburger SV and then disappeared for a while in the Oberliga Berlin.

Tasmania was world champion, Wacker 04 was world champion, Spandauer SV was world champion, and Hertha BSC, of ​​course, was too. And if the average football fan can count on anything, it's a Hertha cup defeat: In August 1960, they suffered a 0-1 defeat to FK Pirmasens, which shifted the world title to the Southwest Oberliga, until the UFCC champions of Wormatia Worms lost to an even lower-class club, Fvgg. Mainz-Mombach from the Southwest Amateur League.

Anything is possible! A win, a good day, two good tackles, a shot, a goal, in! The UFCC's rich history has made many pious fantasies come true: Anyone can be anything here, success can't be bought, everything is connected. For decades, the title roamed the lower leagues, was passed back up through cup matches, was snatched away in the European Cup by a team from another country, and then sank there again. Throughout the 2010s, the title seemed irretrievably lost, submerged in the depths of the French amateur leagues, until Paris St. Germain seized it in 2020, only to soon lose it to FC Bayern (2020 Champions League final), after which it spent a while in the Bundesliga, Hungary, Spain, and Italy.

The UFCC has seen a lot, and yet the project is only just beginning: There's still a whole world to explore! The reigning champion is Borussia Dortmund, who clinched the title in April with a 3-1 win over Barcelona. On Tuesday, a new world is in the air: a Club World Cup, FIFA style. BVB's opponent is Fluminense, from Rio. For the first time ever, the world title could leave Europe in this match! And that's the only reason to be interested in this competition, FIFA's newest money-making machine.