SV Straelen is a German association football club

Football in Germany

Association football is the most popular sport in Germany. The German Football Association is the sport's national governing body, with 6.6 million members organized in over 26,000 football clubs. There is a league system, with the 1. and 2. Bundesliga on top, and the winner of the first...

 from Straelen

Straelen

Straelen is a municipality in the district of Cleves, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near the border with the Netherlands, approx. 10 km north-east of Venlo.Straelen was first mentioned in Latin as Strala in 1063.-External links:*...

, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club was established in 1919 and today has nearly 2,400 members with departments for athletics, badminton, basketball, gymnastics, handball

Team handball

Handball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team...

, karate

Karate

is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Okinawa, Japan. It was developed from indigenous fighting methods called and Chinese kenpō. Karate is a striking art using punching, kicking, knee and elbow strikes, and open-handed techniques such as knife-hands. Grappling, locks,...

, swimming, and volleyball.

History

Long an unheralded local side, Sportverein Straelen first won promotion to the fourth tier Oberliga Nordrhein in 1996. The team finished just inside the relegation zone the following season, but avoided being sent down when the second team side of KFC Uerdingen, which had finished ahead of SV, folded due to the loss of the club's sponsor. Straelen parlayed their reprieve into a three year stay at the Oberliga level that ended with a 17th place finish in 2001. During this period the team earned an appearance in the opening round of the DFB-Pokal

DFB-Pokal

The DFB-Pokal or DFB Cup is a German knockout football cup competition held annually. 64 teams participate in the competition, including all clubs from the Bundesliga and the 2nd Bundesliga. It is considered the second most important national title in German football after the Bundesliga...

 (German Cup) following a 1999 regional cup win.

SV returned to the Oberliga Nordrhein (IV) in 2006 on the strength of a Verbandsliga Niederrhein (V) title. In 2007–08, the club clearly missed the qualifying criteria for the new Oberliga Nordrhein-Westfalen

Oberliga Nordrhein-Westfalen

The NRW-Liga, or Nordrhein-Westfalen-Liga, is the highest football League in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is one of the eleven Oberliga groups in German football, the 5th tier of the German football league system....

, coming last in the league. In an odd twist, while the first team was relegated to the Verbandsliga, the reserve team archived promotion from the Landesliga at the same time. For this reason, the club fields both teams in the same league in the 2008–09 season, a novelty at this level of play.

Stadium

SV Straelen play their home fixtures at Sportplatz Römerstraße which has a seating area and general admission grandstand with a capacity of 2,300.

Sources

• Grüne, Hardy (2001). Vereinslexikon. Kassel: AGON Sportverlag ISBN 3-89784-147-9
• Das deutsche Fußball-Archiv historical German domestic league tables (in German)
• eufo.de European football club profiles and current team rosters