Saarland’s football fairy tale has a name: SV Elversberg. The club is promoted to the second Bundesliga as the smallest village in top-flight German football. But that’s just where the problems begin.
“No more third division!” Sing around 7800 fans of SV Elversberg and storm exuberantly onto the pitch. Gold glitter is shot into the sky with cannons, the players have tears in their eyes and celebrate their coach. Celebration mood in the small Saarland town of Elversberg.
Bundesliga! SV Elversberg players celebrate the promotion
On Saturday, May 21, 2023, the sports association 07 Elversberg – or simply the SVE for short – creates something sensational: After just one season in the third Bundesliga, the village club is promoted to the second division. The eyes of the fans are already beaming at the thought of big football games: traditional clubs like 1. FC Kaiserslautern, Fortuna Düsseldorf or Schalke 04 will be playing on the Elversberg lawn in the coming season. They will all bring their fans with them. The Ursapharm Arena, the stadium that is still only called “Kaiserlinde” by the Saarlanders, is said to be boiling.
But one cannot really be happy. Bernd Huf, non-party mayor of the Saarland municipality of Spiesen-Elversberg now has a problem. “We’re really missing everything,” he says. Huf is sitting at the conference table in his office in the town hall in Spiesen, the former neighboring town of Elversberg. The two municipalities were merged in the 1970s, and 13,000 people now live here. The mayor tears his hair. His community is anything but suitable for the second division.
The stadium has yet to become suitable for the second division.
No train station, no parking lots, no infrastructure
There is no train station in Elversberg, parking spaces directly at the stadium are rare. Around 450 cars can be parked in the surrounding areas. So far, there has only been a shuttle to the stadium from the Heinitz motorway car park, which is a good three and a half kilometers away. There is no direct bus line from the surrounding area to the Ursapharm Arena. Even during the regional league games of the SVE with a maximum of 7800 spectators, traffic in Elversberg and the surrounding area was quite tight.
Once the stadium has been rebuilt – another construction site on the way to being suitable for the second division – it should hold 15,000 people. “The place just can’t handle it,” fears Huf. Something has to happen, especially with regard to the infrastructure – and quickly.
Mayor Bernd Huf: “We really lack everything.”
But traffic is not the only problem. Elversberg is not prepared for so many visitors. There is only one hotel in town. Foreign football fans will probably have to go to the surrounding district town of Neunkirchen or to the state capital of Saarbrücken for the night.
The municipality of Spiesen-Elversberg cannot turn many screws itself. The road that runs past the stadium and needs to be widened is a country road, the motorway exit, which the mayor believes should be extended, is a federal responsibility. Mayor Huf is clear: “We can only solve this together with the state government.” Huf had therefore contacted the Saarland State Chancellery weeks ago so that a meeting could be arranged with the Ministry of the Interior and other parties involved to clarify the numerous questions – not least who should pay for the whole thing.
Promotion celebration on the town hall balcony – befitting and yet provisional
The club will pay for the conversion of the stadium, that’s for sure. The excavators roll into the Ursapharm Arena on the Monday after the promotion weekend. The plans for the stadium conversion have been in the drawers for months. Twice as many fans as before, 15,000 people should have space after the complete renovation in Elversberg. It should be in 2025. Until then, the club wants to make do with an interim solution: tubular steel grandstands are to be installed during the summer break so that the stadium can receive 10,000 fans at the start of the second Bundesliga.
Despite all the challenges that the club and the small community of Spiesen-Elversberg are facing, there is also a great sense of pride. The club flags of SV Elversberg are flying in front of the town hall in Spiesen-Elversberg, and Mayor Huf has set up a balcony especially for the promotion celebration. His small town hall actually only has a canopy. This was secured with scaffolding so that players, coaches and fans could celebrate their Saarland football fairy tale befitting their status. 17 years after the relegation of 1. FC Saarbrücken from the second Bundesliga, Saarland finally has a club in top German football again.