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Fußball-Club Augsburg 1907 e. , commonly known as FC Augsburg (German pronunciation: [ɛfˌt͡seː ˈaʊ̯ksbʊʁk] ), is a German professional football club based in Augsburg, Bavaria.
FC Augsburg plays in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system. The team was founded as Fußball-Klub Alemannia Augsburg in 1907 and played as BC Augsburg from 1921 to 1969. With over 27,000 members, it is the largest football club in Bavarian Swabia.
The club has spent most of its history fluctuating between the second and third divisions, with disappointment striking in the early 2000s when Augsburg were relegated to the fourth division for two seasons. However, the club experienced a surge following this setback, and was eventually promoted to the Bundesliga for the first time in 2011, where it has remained ever since. Augsburg have consolidated their Bundesliga status in the 2010s, finishing a record high fifth in the 2014–15 season before several mid-table finishes, and made their European debut in the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League, with the club reaching the Round of 32 before being knocked out by Liverpool 1–0 on aggregate.
Since 2009, FC Augsburg's stadium has been the 30,660 capacity WWK ARENA, located south of Augsburg city centre and easily accessible via tram. The club, known as the Fuggerstädter or simply as FCA, receive strong home support with an average attendance of 29,301 in the 2023–24 Bundesliga season (95.6% of stadium capacity). It is a single tier stadium with a standing terrace behind one of the goals, known as the Ulrich-Biesinger-Tribüne, and three seated stands with a standing section in the opposite corner to the Ulrich-Biesinger-Tribüne for away fans.
Augsburg maintains fierce local rivalries with Ingolstadt and TSV 1860 Munich. Matches between these clubs typically attract large crowds, and a match in 1973 at 1860 Munich set the all-time spectator record for the Olympic Stadium. FCA regularly sell out their local Bavarian derby against Bayern Munich.
The club's colours are red, green and white which can be found across the club's kits while the club badge is similar to the Augsburg city emblem. The club's training facilities are situated next to the stadium while a club shop is located near Augsburg Hauptbahnhof in the city centre.
Formation
A merger of Augsburg's two most successful clubs, TSV Schwaben and BC Augsburg, was discussed as early as the late 1940s, but distrust between the two sides and a fear that the other club would dominate the merger caused each side to hesitate, despite the financial trouble both clubs were in. A first serious meeting between the two sides was held in 1964, both clubs having dropped out of tier-one football by then. The leadership of the multi-sports club Schwaben was completely behind a merger, but the club's football department was not, and once more the process of forming FCA was stalled. Traditionally, BCA saw itself as a working-class club, based in the north of Augsburg, while Schwaben was the club of the more affluent and based south of the city, with the river Wertach forming something of a boundary between the two clubs territories.
In 1968, with BCA struggling in the third division after relegation from professional football the year before and Schwaben soon to follow, another effort was made. In April 1969, a high-level meeting between the two club bosses brought the decision to merge the clubs and name the new side FC Augsburg. FCA was to be a football club only, with no other sports department. The then-mayor of Augsburg, Hans Breuer, was one of the driving forces behind the move.
The merger came at a time of on-the-field decline for both sides, Schwaben had just been relegated from the tier-two Regionalliga Süd and decided that an attempt to regain their status was financially impossible, while BCA narrowly missed out on promotion to the league that season. In June, 256 of 265 of BCA's members present voted for the merger while, shortly after, 75 percent of Schwaben's members also approved the motion.
Schwaben, however, opted for the "small solution"—the club was to remain independent with only its football department merging into the new club. But even this move was not universally popular within the club, with some former members forming a new football club, Eintracht Augsburg, and restarting from the lowest level of the pyramid. For this reason, FCA is generally not considered to carry on the traditions of TSV Schwaben, only those of BC Augsburg. A year later, the footballers of Eintracht rejoined Schwaben but, since then, have always remained an amateur club. It took the new football department until 1981 to regain its third-division status, where they were to meet FCA for the first time in league football and renewed the Augsburg derby.
The new FCA played its first game on 30 July 1969, when it met 1. FC Nürnberg in Augsburg in front of 13,000, losing 0–3 in extra time.