OMG — Oh My God

FSV Mainz 05 — Where football careers begin! As players, coaches and managers. Who would know better than Jürgen Norbert Klopp, who won the Champions League with Liverpool on June 1, 2019? "Everything I am, I am because of you," said "Kloppo," who shaped the club as both player and coach like no other, in tears at his farewell in 2008. But Mainz 05 and their legendary manager Christian Heidel have launched many more careers. Thomas Tuchel, André Schürrle, Lewis Holtby, Adam Szalai — all took their first big steps in the Rhineland-Palatinate capital.

A transfer masterclass with colourful presidents: Jürgen Jughard, elected in 1980 with sweeping powers, nearly drove the club to bankruptcy before his mysterious death in 1982. Jughard loved the spectacle. Even in the Oberliga days, he invited every club president in the league to a Fastnacht celebration at his own expense. The German amateur championship victory in June 1982 — he did not live to see it; Jughard died in late May of the same year under circumstances never fully explained.

It's over in 2014: Thomas Tuchel refused to fulfil his contract in May 2014, even though it still had a year to run. Instead, he wanted a sabbatical, just as Pep Guardiola had done. But he wanted to keep living in Mainz. "Voluntarily," as he later said in an interview when he returned to Mainz in 2015 with his new club Borussia Dortmund. The relationship between Mainz and Tuchel cooled noticeably.