Alemannia Aachen are nicknamed Die Alemannen.
Founded on 16th December 1900 by a group of eighteen high school students the club are located in the Western corner of Germany. Just a few miles from Belgium and closer to Maastricht in the Netherlands than to Köln Alemannia are struggling in the fourth tier of German football.
The Alemannia part of the Aachen club name stems from the Alemanni which roughly translates to ‘all men‘. The Alemanni were a confederation of Germanic tribes that existed in the Upper Rhine River area during the first millennium.
The name serves to stress the club’s German identity as an all male sports club.
The club from Aachen in the Bundesliga era have best been known as a second tier team but they did reach the final of the DFB Pokal in 1965 losing to the powerful Borrussia Dortmund.
Promotion to the Bundesliga finally arrived in 1967 and they ended the 1968-1969 season in second place behind the runaway winners Bayern. Things went very downhill after that high as Alemannia finished bottom at the end of the next season.
Twenty years followed in the second division before financial difficulties got too much and the club dropped to the third tier for the first time ever in 1990.
It took nine seasons to get back to Bundesliga 2 before a long-awaited second Bundesliga promotion arrived in 2006 under Dieter Hecking – 36 years since they last featured in the top flight.
Despite having played in the UEFA Cup the previous season, a place gained after finishing runners-up in the DFB Cup in 2003/04 where they lost narrowly to Werder Bremen – Aachen went straight back down in 17th place after only one season.
Hecking had left the club early in the season and under Guido Buchwald the season was a disaster.
Aachen have been in the fourth tier of German football since 2013.
Tivoli Old and New
The old Tivoli home of Aachen was famous for the Würselener Wall an open standing tribune for fans.
Today a street in the new housing area is named after the Würselener Wall. It sits adjacent to the Spielplatz Alter Tivoli; Stadion Weg; Hauptribune and Alemannenstrasse – all named after the old stadium.
On 17 May 2008 Alemannia Aachen began building a new stadium named the New Tivoli nearby, and also adjacent to Krefelder Straße where the old stadium had been.
Generations now make a pilgrimage out of town to the Sportpark Soers area for every home game just north of where they had previously watched the team.
In terms of capacity utilisation the Tivoli is well ahead of all other stadiums in the fourth tier but barely full come a Saturday afternoon. Innovations such as special pitch heating and comfortable seats in the main stand have been installed but the Tivoli has lost its nostalgic feel and traditional charm.
Where once fans gloried in being caught under rain showers now the fans experience the action up close in a covered modern stadium. They stand or sit on modern tribunes or via a Grandstand that is far ahead of nearly everything else in the Regionalliga West but some way from how it used to be.