Full name | Sportverein Atlas Delmenhorst e.V. |
---|---|
Founded | 13 July 1973 (original club) 4 April 2012 (reformed) |
Ground | Stadion an der Düsternortstraße |
Capacity | 12,000 |
Chairman | Jörg Borkus |
Manager | Jürgen Hahn |
League | Landesliga Weser-Ems (VI) |
2015–16 | Bezirksliga Weser-Ems 2 (VII), 1st (promoted) |
Atlas Delmenhorst is a German association football club from the city of Delmenhorst, Lower Saxony.
The club's greatest success has been to earn promotion to the tier three Regionalliga Nord in 1995, where it played for three seasons. The club has also made a single appearance in the first round of the DFB-Pokal, the German Cup, in 1980–81.
The club, formed in a merger in 1973, folded in 2002 after declaring insolvency but was reformed a decade later in 2012.
SV Atlas Delmenhorst was formed on 13 July 1973 when three local Delmenhorst clubs, FC Roland, VSK Bungerhof and SSV Delmenhorst, merged with the support of local building equipment manufacturer Atlas Weyhausen GmbH. The new club took up the stadium of SSV, built in 1930, the Stadion an der Düsternortstraße, as its home ground as FC Roland's was too small and VSK neither had a football team nor a stadium.
The new club quickly rose through the league system, winning promotion to the tier four Landesliga Niedersachsen in 1975. Atlas won this league as a freshly promoted side and moved up to the tier three Oberliga Nord for the 1976–77 season. The club played for six seasons in the league until 1983 when an eighteenth place finish meant relegation again. In between the club finished as high as fourth place in the league in 1979–80. It also made a single appearance in the DFB-Pokal for 1980–81, reaching the fourth round, eliminating 2. Bundesliga sides Rot-Weiß Oberhausen and Kickers Offenbach on the way before being knocked-out by Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Atlas was back in the highest league of Lower Saxony, the tier four Verbandsliga, from 1983 to 1986, taking out league titles in 1984 and 1986. It failed to win promotion to the Oberliga in 1984 but succeeded in 1986. After two difficult Oberliga seasons the club was relegated back to the Verbandsliga in 1988. The club struggled for a number of seasons in the Verbandsliga and came close to relegation but recovered and finished runners-up in 1992 and 1994. The latter qualified the club for the new Oberliga Niedersachsen/Bremen when the Regionalliga Nord was established as the new third tier in Northern Germany and the Oberliga Nord was replaced by two regional leagues.