Fritz Walter Stadion

The Fritz Walter Stadion sits on the Betzenberg hill above the city, named after Fritz Walter — Kaiserslautern's most celebrated son, who captained West Germany to their 1954 World Cup victory. The stadium holds about 49,000 people and was a World Cup venue in 2006. On a matchday the atmosphere is among the best in German football, regardless of which division the team happens to be playing in.

FC Kaiserslautern — die Roten Teufel, the Red Devils — have spent time in the lower divisions since their glory years, but they retain a fanbase that is large, passionate, and deeply loyal. The club and the city are genuinely inseparable in a way that is increasingly rare in professional football.

things to do sight sport
A story
In 1998 FC Kaiserslautern won the Bundesliga as a newly promoted team — an achievement that is probably unrepeatable in the modern game. They had come up from the second division the year before with a squad assembled on a fraction of the budgets of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. Their captain was Bodo Illgner. Their talismanic figure was Ciriaco Sforza. And they did it with a style of football that the Betzenberg crowd recognised as their own.