Salvation came late for Karlsruher FC but it did come. The KSC captain Kai Bülow scored with a header on 83 minutes in last Saturday's match against SV Wehen Wiesbaden to secure a 2-1 victory in the first win of the season on matchday four. The two-time DFB Cup winners (1955 and 1956) were relegated to the third division for the third time earlier this year. The club are hoping that this season marks a repeat of the previous ones following relegation in 2000 and 2012. The team from Baden ended those two campaigns as champions to return to the second tier. The club from the south-west of Germany are again favourites to take one of the top positions in the third division this term. However, they are currently eleventh in the table after four matches.
Head coach Marc-Patrick Meister took over the team in April 2017 in an almost hopeless position. Both Tomas Oral and Mirko Slomka had been and gone from the hot seat over the course of the season. The 37-year-old manager now faces the task of achieving consistently good results with a rejigged squad from the summer. There is certainly enough individual talent in the side: In Anton Fink, KSC signed the record goalscorer in the third division (116 goals in 254 games) from Chemnitzer FC. His strike partner Dominik Stroh-Engel joined from Darmstadt where he scored 27 goals in 2013/14; a record return for the Lilies in a third division season. Incoming players Kai Bülow (1860 Munich), David Pisot (Würzburger Kickers), Daniel Gordon (SV Sandhausen), Andreas Hofmann (SpVgg Greuther Fürth) and Marc Lorenz (SV Wehen Wiesbaden) have all demonstrated their quality in the second and third divisions. They are joined by talented youngsters with a lot of promise who moved from Bundesliga U23 teams to the Wildpark plus Germany U20 international Matthias Bader from the club's own youth system.
KSC have had to deal with the typical symptoms of relegation from the second to the third tier in German football: 26 players left the squad in the summer with 20 coming in, including several from the youth teams. The only players from last season's KSC squad in the starting eleven against Wehen were striker Oskar Zawada and talented midfielder Florent Muslija. The latter played almost exclusively for the U19 team last term.
The youth teams at KSC have produced a number of big names in German football in the past. In the 1990s, Oliver Kahn and Mehmet Scholl began their careers at KSC before moving on to the record champions in Munich. And Jens Nowotny, Bayer 04 captain for many years, also came from the youth set-up at Karlsruher SC and he was bossing the defence when Karlsruher last reached the final of the DFB Cup. Under head coach Winfried Schäfer, KSC lost 1-0 to FC Kaiserslautern in 1996. Karlsruher SC are still renowned in German football for their success in youth development - and that is almost certain to remain the case.
KSC are an attractive, and yet tough opponent for the first round of the Cup. The team from Baden have played more competitive matches than the Werkself with four games in the league already under their belts. And the quality of the squad is among the best in the third division. If the new team starts to gel quickly and doesn't drop too many points in the league matches then it would be reasonable to expect there will only be one year before Karlsruher SC return to the second division.
It was another incredibly close call in the end: The second showdown in the 2026/27 VBL Club Championship saw the #B04eSports team once again narrowly miss out on a place in the top 16 of the preliminary round – and with it, a spot in the in-person knockout stage. It was a bitter blow: Marc and Sean Landwehr again fell just short, despite being level on points with their rivals. As was the case last month, their weaker record across the twelve individual matches in the six preliminary round fixtures proved decisive.
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“They stuck with us over the past few weeks when things weren’t going so well,” said captain Edmond Tapsoba, thanking the fans for their support after the 2–1 win in Cologne and dedicating the derby victory to them. Throughout the 90 minutes, the Werkself had looked unfazed and in command, inflicting the first home defeat of the season on FC Köln. It was the sixth consecutive win against the Cologne team for Bayer 04 – head coach Carles Martínez, on the other hand, was facing the team from the neighbouring city for the first time and “now really knows what this derby win means”. The Werkself derby review.
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Following the 2–1 derby victory away at FC Köln on Bundesliga matchday 9, Edmond Tapsoba, Malik Tillman and Aleix Garcia spoke to Werkself TV...
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Werkself TV shows the highlights of Bayer 04's 2-1 derby win at 1. FC Köln Matchday 9 of the 2026/27 Bundesliga season...
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There were celebrations among those in black and red at the RheinEnergieSTADION. On Matchday 9 of the 2026/27 Bundesliga season, the Werkself beat 1. FC Köln 2-0 and registered their sixth successive win in the derby. Aleix Garcia put Bayer 04 in front after just seven minutes with a direct free kick. Leverkusen played with discipline and energy after that and didn't allow some fierce challenges to unsettle them. Patrik Schick made it 2-0 in the 86th minute, and Said El Mala's goal in stoppage time for Köln proved nothing more than consolation. Jonas Hofmann crowned the derby win with his 100th appearance for the club.
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