A friend told me about this team a few months back. FC St. Pauli is located in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg and they play in the 2nd Bundesliga in Germany. The club was founded in 1910 and has never won anything significant but they have an extremely good supports group. The team is nicknamed The Pirates of the League.
In the mid-1980's they gained a "kult" following. Skull and crossbones became their unofficial logo. Supporters began to be known as very left wing people who turned games into a party atmosphere. As you probably know, the Berlin Wall still stood in the 80's in Germany. St. Pauli was the first club to ban right-wing, nationalist displays in it's stadium. At this time fascism inspired football hooligans so think racist skin heads. In 1981 the club only average 1,600 spectators and by the late 90's they constantly sold out a 20,000 capacity stadium despite bouncing back and forth between the 1st division and the lower divisions.
The fans are great. They are against racism, sexism and any kind of hate. They have one of the largest base of female fans in Germany because of their stand against sexism. They also have one of the largest fan bases in the country despite their current stance in the 2nd division.
They are friendly with the supporters of Celtic (Scotland) and Hapoel Tel-Aviv (Israel). St. Pauli fans have been known to go to Celtic's UEFA games. Hapoel Tel-Aviv share many of the ideas as St. Pauli fans and recently they waved a St. Pauli flag at one of their matches.
They last played in the first division in the 2001-02 season. They then got relegated two years in a row and faced financial trouble. Fundraisers brought the club back though. They made the semifinals of the DFB Cup (not the David Frederick Berger cup, it is the German Cup) in 2005.
In 2006-07 they won the German 3rd division so they are in the 2nd Bundesliga in 2007-08. They are currently in 12th with a 6-8-7 (W-D-L) record. Teams that finish 15th-18th will be relegated and the top 3 get promoted to the 1st Bundesliga.
Some notable players who suited up for St. Pauli are Americans Cory Gibbs, Ian Joy and Paul Caligiuri. Joy recently left St. Pauli for Real Salt Lake but he played 21 games for St. Pauli. Gibbs played in 60 games and scored 3 goals from 2001 to 2003 for St. Pauli. He has also capped for the US national team. Caligiuri played 15 games for St. Pauli and played in over 100 games for the US. He played for the yanks in the 1990 and 1994 World Cup. Croatian striker Ivan Klasnić played on St. Pauli from 1998 from 2001 and scored 26 goals in 95 appearances. He has been on Werder Bremen since 2001 and played for Croatia in the 2006 World Cup.
Some great videos of their supporters are listed below. Maybe you will become as obsessed with them as I am.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zHLWclMs_Pw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1A2r8vsEnko
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FaZrBRXTgsI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hclhA8-Cgf8
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ft-l6TOw9jo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=44_lOJaNGU4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9wNmZq3uGoQ
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