100th anniversary of the association for Victoria Mennrath
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How Borussia helped shape the Mennrath club history
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A picture from Victoria Mennrath’s founding years from the 1920s.
Photo: Victoria Mennrath
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Football District League The district league is 100 years old this year. The club’s history also has many overlaps with Borussia – Winfried Schäfer was a coach there, among others.
Victoria Mennrath is now also a member of the 100-year-old club. Due to the uncertain situation in the still ongoing corona pandemic, the celebration should not take place until next year. It remains to be seen whether well-wishers from Borussia will come. But at least in the history of the Mennrath club, paths crossed again and again with today’s great Borussia.
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Before and after the war, people met in various sporting leagues. The Mennrather Christian Theissen, who played for VfL from 1938 to 1948, is one of the Borussia eleven of the century, reports the 81-year-old Heinz Kempers, who has been with the club for 64 years and was a player and youth coach on the board an old newspaper article as evidence.
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Mennrath was always well attended, especially in the 1930s. For example, 2000 spectators came against Borussia and the “Spö”, 1000 saw a game against Odenkirchen, 500 against Union Krefeld. How so many spectators found space there can no longer be fully understood today. “But there must have been terraces where Mennrathschmidt Street runs today, otherwise none of this would have been possible,” remembers Kempers.
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In Borussia’s weddings in the 1970s, the late players’ agent Norbert Pflippen, who was domiciled in Mennrath, lured Borussia to a celebrity game in the “Mennrather Kull”. The Victoria had just received a new ash place for 250,000 DM. Michael Reiner, who has been with the club for 42 years and previously played as a player, explains: “Norbert organized everything and even gave Borussia a television. I still remember when Berti Vogts looked down on arrival and saw that it was ashes. He turned to Pflippen and just said: Pflippen, you A … He must have kept quiet about the fact that you are playing on ashes. And it was so hot that day that the fire brigade watered the place shortly beforehand ”.
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In the 1979/80 season Mennrath rose to the district league A. Player-coach back then: Borussia player Winfried Schäfer. It was his first coaching job, since then he has seen a lot of the world and is now a 71-year-old trainer in Qatar. The chairman Wolfgang Platen would like to try to invite Schäfer to the celebrations in the coming year.
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There were also historical moments in modern times: the fire of the clubhouse and the later reconstruction and expansion, the artificial turf pitch and of course the promotion to the district league. In addition, the 2018 game in the Niederrhein Cup game against Rot-Weiss Essen.
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The influence of Borussia is still noticeable in Mennrath today: With coach Simon Netten and physio Andreas Blum as well as six players from the squad, eight people have a Borussia past.
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