Full name | Sportclub Preußen 1906 e.V. Münster |
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Nickname(s) | Die Adler (the Eagles) |
Founded | 30 April 1906 |
Ground | Preußenstadion |
Capacity | 15,000 (2,931 seated) |
Chairman | Georg Krimphove |
Coach | Benno Möhlmann |
League | 3. Liga |
2015–16 | 9th |
SC Preußen Münster (English: Prussia Münster) is a German sports club based in Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia which is mostly recognised for its football section. The football team currently plays in 3. Liga which is the third tier in German football. Preußen Münster also fields teams in tennis, athletics, handball and fistball.
The club was founded as FC Preußen on the 30th of April 1906 and has its roots in a group formed at the Johann-Conrad-Schlaun Grammar School. Historians consider patriotic reasons for naming the club after Prussia. At first the club did not have his own ground and was playing at a parade ground of the army at Loddenheide. General Baron von Bissing gave the permission only in the case that the goals would be taken down again after training. On June 24, 1907 the Eagles won their first game against FC Osnabrück with 5-0. After successfully applying for the Western German League system the team first competed in second tier. Already in 1908 the Eagles got promoted to first league and in 1914 they won the Westphalian Championship. Between 1916 and 1926 the club played on Münstermannplatz which was close to the current ground, the Preußenstadion. In 1921 they won the Championship a second time and also took on their current name.
In 1933, Preußen advanced to the Gauliga Westfalen, one of sixteen top-flight leagues established through the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich. They earned only mediocre results there and were relegated twice. Their second demotion in 1941 left them out of first division football until after World War II.
The team played three seasons in the Landesliga Westfalen Gr. 2 (II) before returning to the top-flight in the Oberliga West in the 1948–49 season. That arrival was accompanied by some notoriety as Preußen Münster became the first German football club to build a team by buying players, something previously unheard of in a country committed to the ideal of amateurism. Siegfried Rachuba, Adolf Preissler, Rudolf Schulz, Felix Gerritzen, and Josef Lammers formed a front five dubbed by the press as the "Hundred-Thousand-Mark Line", even though that much money never did change hands. Rachuba is still Münsters most successful first tier striker of all times with 97 goals in 238 games.