Campino, the singer of the punk rock band "Die Toten Hosen", has demonstrated something like clairvoyant abilities when he recently modified the lyrics of a song at the "Wasen" folk festival in Stuttgart.

Just a tee away from the club center of the Bundesliga soccer club VfB Stuttgart, he sang: "And there are still the kickers if you have nobody else." A fan of the club, which is now in its fifth season in the fifth-rate Oberliga, tweeted then: "So we're not forgotten after all."

In fact, football fans all over Germany ask themselves from time to time: What actually happened to the Kickers?

The long-standing second division club, which is still eighth in the all-time table.

They got an answer when they looked at the results in the DFB Cup on Saturday.

The Kickers defeated Greuther Fürth, who had been relegated to the first division, 2-0 in an amazingly calm manner.

And the surprising success was not lucky, but more than deserved.

The better team won, praised Fürth's coach Marc Schneider: "The Kickers did it very, very well."

Stronger Perception

Rainer Lorz, the Kickers President, was impressed by the television pictures produced by his team: "We are now being noticed more publicly again, but we won't do anything nonsense with the money." The Kickers already have almost 420,000 euros as a result of the success secure.

Last season they only missed promotion to the regional league because of the worse goal difference.

The fans in particular are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to close the gap to city rivals VfB again.

More than 7000 spectators passionately supported their team against Fürth.

The Blues in Stuttgart football were always the rich and beautiful from the posh residential area of ​​Waldau, who cultivated their image well into the 1990s by wearing a blue tie on the football field, while people close to the Reds from the working-class district of Bad Cannstatt wore torn denim vests with the VfB logo as a habit.

VfB was always more successful, but Kickers, who last played in the second division in the 2000/2001 season, always thought they were better.

Unsuccessful club

The TV tower, which grows out of the woods almost directly next to the Kickers stadium, looks like a symbol.

The youth players who have been trained at the club have always strived for higher things.

At some point the likeable but notoriously unsuccessful club became too small for them.

They went down into the valley, to VfB, to rise as a footballer and become something.

National players and German champions like Karl Allgöwer, for example.

Or they won the world championships like Guido Buchwald and Jürgen Klinsmann.

They became European champions like Fredi Bobic.

Or European champions like Robert Prosinečki.

They still remember the story of the native of Schwenningen with as much amusement as the unforgettable 4-1 victory in October 1991 in the Bundesliga at FC Bayern, which led to the dismissal of Jupp Heynckes.

Prosinečki, who is now 53, spent six years with the Kickers youth team before they sent him away because the then eleven-year-old was not considered good enough.

The Croatian moved on and later played for Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, ​​among others.

The opponents of the Kickers today are Oberachern, Rielasingen-Arlen or Holzhausen.

"Our daily bread is the Oberliga," said Kickers coach Mustafa Ünal humbly after the win against Fürth, "we don't want to go to the DFB Cup final, we want to get promoted."