Welcome to a new season!
I have already talked about Wuppertal on my blog entry of 02/12/23, although that was admittedly mainly about the train and Tiffi the elephant. I also discussed Oberhausen briefly on 25/11/23 and also 25/05/24. So let’s have a look at the league they are currently playing in.
It’s matchday 2 in the Regionalla West, so not much* point in looking at the table, but here it is anyways, with 11th playing 15th. *ie zero
Rather more interesting is the table from the end of the very first season of the Regionalliga West (1963-64).
Note the presence of such names as Borussia Mönchengladbach, Bayer Leverkusen, Fortuna Düsseldorf and Arminia Bielefeld. This is because on their introduction, the Regional leagues formed not the 4th tier of the pyramid, as they do now, but the 2nd. This is how the regional looked in 1963.. one of them is (geographically, at least) a lot smaller than the rest…
The five regional league winners and three (then, later, five ) of the runners-up then went into a two-group play-off system – initially with four in each group, then later, five on each group- for promotion to the (also newly-formed) Bundesliga. Nobody from the West league actually made it that year. The Regionalliga West (along with the others) was dissolved in 1974 to make way for the 2. Bundesliga Nord. So there followed a period where the 2nd tier was still regionalised, but now only into two regions, thusly:
This remained in place until the now-national 2. Bundesliga was formed in 1981. This follows the recent historical pattern of the pyramid, which is either to push the level at which regionalisation begins downwards in the pyramid, or to reduce the degree of regionalisation at any one level. This is a reminder of how the modern (4th tier) Regional Leagues look:
As Galadriel might put it: “The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.”
Anyways, let’s get to the football, eh?
