Newly promoted 1. FC Saarbrücken have made an excellent start to their first season in the 3. Liga. Fresh off winning 2-0 against Viktoria Köln last night, they can sit back and relax as the rest of the division‘s fixtures take place this weekend. With a five point cushion at the top of the table they know that regardless of any other results they will remain in first place. The team that won the Regionalliga Südwest last season also had a superb cup run, getting to the semi finals of the DFB-Pokal where they lost to Bayer Leverkusen, a team which finished fifth in the Bundesliga. As such they were the first non league team to make it into the semi finals. So they had nothing to fear entering this season. After putting a four game wining run together to go top earlier this season, they stumbled and lost two on the bounce at the end of October. However they have emerged from that wobble and last night’s win, away at the team in 4th place, was their third in a row and sees them firmly established as the best side in the division right now. Coach Lukas Kwasniok was appointed at the start of this year having been dismissed as coach of then bottom Carl Zeiss Jena last November. Instead of looking up at the rest of the 3. Liga, as he then was, he is now looking down on the competition. “He’s doing a good job tactically and the team is listening to him. He involves the players in this decisions and that is really important. That is the secret of his success” said Sporting Director Jürgen Lugingner ahead of last night’s game about the 39 year old coach. No one at the club is getting carried away and there is no talk of promotion. The 3. Liga can be a notoriously difficult division to maintain a great run of form. None of last season’s eventual top 3 were anywhere near those positions at the half way point last year. However there is no doubt that 1 FC Saarbrücken are making the early running this season and are currently the team to beat in the 3. Liga.