SV
Sillenbuch is a sports club with an amateur football club from the German city
of Stuttgart, a few hundred kilometres from the headquarters of Stuttgarter
Kickers. The club were formed in 1892, with the football section beginning in
1920.
Emil Kraemer
made a pasture available to the club, which took on their green and white colours
from 1926. The club struggled financially in the years up to and around World
War Two, until it was restructured in 1947 with Willi Senn as head of the
football department.
In 1950, SV
Sillenbuch moved into their new Spitalwald home, with improvement work to the
pitch being carried out in subsequent years as the team prospered on the pitch.
The turning point came in 1956 following the appointment of new coach Siegfried
Boll, who arrived from PSV Stuttgart.
Boll took
the team to the championship of the B-Class, as well as lifting the cup
competition with victory over SV Heslach. Unfortunately, Sillenbuch’s second
season in the A Class ended in relegation under new coach Eberhardt. Coaches came
and went in the early 60s as the city council installed a 400m running track
around the pitch at Spitalwald.
Further works were carried out under the guidance of general manager Dieter Benk. The 1964-65 season saw the team end as league runners-up up along with victory in the District Cup Final over Weil im Schönbuch. In 1970-71, SVS just missed out on promotion to the top amateur league. Sadly, as the decade
progressed, Sillenbuch hit a slump and found themselves back in the Kreisliga in
1980.
Under Edgar Short, the team returned to the Bezirksliga following the lifting
of the Kreisliga B title as the club’s youth development came to the fore. Despite a
further relegation, the club climbed back once more in 1989-90. As ever, the
success was celebrated wildly with a trip away for the squad. Membership
increased as teams were added as the club embarked on much community work.
On the 18th June 1995, VfB Stuttgart visited Spitwald and attracted a crowd of 1,000 for a
friendly game. The following season, Sillenbuch reached the District Cup Final
but went down 3-2 to ASV Botnang. This performance gave the club entry into the
Württemberg Cup. A new
artificial pitch was installed at Spitwald in 1998, along with a brand new turf
surface.
The men’s
first team were relegated from the Bezirksliga down to the Kreisliga in 2011,
but they returned to the higher status within two years. The side looked for
honours under the tuition of head coach Tim Schwab from 2014. A fourteenth-place finish in 2016-17 put Sillenbuch in the relegation play-offs, where defeat
to SV Vaihingen sent the club down to the ninth-tier Kreisliga A 2.
The goals
of Luca Krieglstein helped Zvonimir Topalusic’s side win the title at the first
attempt.
Back in the Bezirksliga,
Sillenbuch finished sixth in 2018-19. Louis Schmidt
led the scoring in 2019-20, before the side went down to Kreisliga A2 Stuttgart at the end of the 2021-22 campaign.
Lukas Schmidt and Fabian Schöck scored the goals to send SVS back up to the eighth-tier a year later. However, 2023-24 saw the side relegated once more, before finishing third in Kreisliga A2 Stuttgart/Böblingen in 2024-25.
SV
Sillenbuch will play in the Kreisliga A2 Stuttgart/Böblingen in the 2025-26 season.
My visit
Sunday 16th August 2015
Although I
had marked down a visit to Spitwald on my itinerary when I first left my hotel
on a very wet Sunday morning, it was still in the balance. I’d gone back to get
changed into dry clothes and was setting out for my afternoon's entertainment in
the Oberliga between Stuttgarter Kickers II and FC 08 Villingen.
As it turned
out, I arrived at Waldau station on the U7 tramline early, so I stayed on for a
couple of stops to Silberwald. Within a few minutes, I’d walked up the footpath
past some allotments to the gates of the ground. A huge
sports hall building was behind the near goal.
The remnants of the old running
track were down the near side touchline with a step of hard standing for
spectators. A couple of attractively painted portable buildings in the club
colours were just inside the gate. In all, it was a basic but neat venue with
trees giving an enclosed feel around two sides.
