RC Strasbourg Alsace

Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace, aka RC Strasbourg. A French club with a giant track record. It has won all three major French trophies in its time and has racked up over 2,000 games in the top flight. Their badge is an interesting-looking creature, but not quite as interesting as the region from which they come: Alsace.

Once again, a simple football badge reveals an absolutely fascinating story.

Anyone who did GCSE History will be familiar with the name Alsace and why it was so important during the 20th century. The region sits nestled between France and Germany and, together with its neighbouring province of Lorraine, sat alongside some of Europe's richest iron ore fields – an essential ingredient for all would-be European empires.

It proved too tempting. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the newly formed German nation defeated the French and seized it.

Which is why the history of RC Strasbourg is actually quite unique.

Founded in 1906, it was originally German. Called Fußballclub Neudorf, it was made up of students from the south of the city and was bankrolled by their teacher. The city and region were divided during this period between German elites who were very much in favour of their new masters in Berlin and locals who felt more deeply rooted in their French identity.

The existing clubs all had substantial German backing. Fußballclub Neudorf didn't, and as such it immediately attracted supporters looking for a way to express their Frenchness – for want of a better word – against the German occupiers. (It was perhaps more complicated than I'm making out; the region was linguistically and culturally German until it fell into the French orbit in the 1600s.)

In fact, if we're being really picky here, the debate goes way back to 842.

Some chap called Charlemagne – King of the Franks – built his capital in what is now modern-day Germany. A few decades after he shuffled off this mortal coil, his grandsons met in Strasbourg and pledged to work together for the lasting peace of Europe (...there have been a few hiccups, admittedly). The Oaths of Strasbourg were written in both an early form of German and an early form of French.

So identity in this region is a little complicated, to put it mildly.

But there were certainly deep French roots and plenty of people wanting to express them around the time those students began kicking a ball about.

However, hopes that they'd immediately make their mark on the Germans were dashed in their very first match against the aptly named FC Germania. The students abandoned the game at half-time at 7–0 down and presumably went off to drown their sorrows in red wine.

Their form improved over the next decade, but their luck didn't.

The team won promotion to the German First Division and secured a permanent playing field... in 1914.

History boffins amongst you will already have realised that this was quite an unfortunate date.

The First World War broke out that summer, the team's players were enlisted, and Alsace found itself right next to the front line. Football was put on hold for a while.

When it returned, things had changed somewhat.

As part of the famous Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, Germany was forced to surrender its military, its empire and large swathes of territory – including Alsace-Lorraine. The French, to rub salt into the wound, delighted in making the Germans sign the document in the Palace of Versailles (just outside Paris – go and visit, it is astonishingly beautiful), as it was in that very same place that the Germans had forced France to surrender Alsace-Lorraine nearly fifty years earlier.

The French wanted symbolic payback.

Obviously, things got a little messy again in the 1940s – you may have read about it – and the club stopped playing once more while its players tried to avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht.

So when Fußballclub Neudorf returned, they were French rather than German and needed a far less German-sounding name.

They opted for Racing Club – a direct nod to one of France's most famous clubs at the time, Racing Club de France of Paris. One of the oldest clubs in the country, it was steeped in French identity, and its ground, complete with racing track, had hosted the athletics events at the 1900 Olympics.

I suppose it would be a bit like... I don't know... France invading Dover and then Dover FC renaming itself Dover Saint-Germain. Or something.

Anyhow, the point was clear:

They were definitely French now.

So that's merely the club's geography and national identity explained.

What about the actual badge?

Let’s start with the cathedral that sits alongside the club's initials. Strasbourg Cathedral was, for over two centuries, the world's tallest building, with its spire reaching 142 metres in 1647 and not being beaten until those pesky cathedral builders over in Hamburg surpassed it. Strasbourg was an important Roman town and, as such, when the Romans switched to Christianity, Strasbourg did too. Remarkably, it had its first Christian bishop in 346. Pretty incredible, really.

So what then of those curved wings? Well – I didn’t know this until I read it – it is a stork.

Specifically, the White Stork, which is to Alsace what the Liver Bird is to Liverpool or the canary is to Norwich. It is identity.

For centuries these enormous birds have migrated from Northern Europe in the summer down to Africa in the winter. Alsace sits directly under their flight path. They became common sights, nesting on rooftops, church towers and chimneys across the region, becoming so closely associated with Alsace that they effectively became its unofficial mascot.

According to local folklore, a house blessed with a stork's nest would enjoy good fortune, prosperity and family happiness. In fact, the famous tale of storks delivering babies can trace its roots back to Alsace, where children were said to wait in a magical pond before being collected and delivered to expectant parents by the birds.

By the 1970s, the stork had almost disappeared from the region altogether, but a hugely successful conservation effort brought it back from the brink. Today, the sight of a stork perched atop a half-timbered Alsatian house is once again commonplace. So if Racing Club Strasbourg wanted a symbol that screamed "We are Alsace", they could hardly have picked anything more fitting than a giant bird famous for delivering babies and bringing good luck.

So there, finally, we have it!

Racing Club Strasbourg.

Built atop the very meeting point of the tectonic plates of French and German identity, begun by German students but named to stick two fingers up at the Germans (if you excuse the British phrase...), the seat of religious power, home of world-beating architecture and heir to a tale linked to one of Europe’s largest and most beautiful birds.

A tale of movement, pride and achievement.

That would be RC Strasbourg.