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Germany Lower Leagues


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A massive database update to make a realistic experience in Germany's amateur leagues down to level 6 (Verbandsliga). It's the result of a collaborative effort of the German forum meistertrainerforum.de

Status: Version 2.1 released, with quite a few changes and bug fixes (see change list)

The 2.1 update can be found here:http://www.mediafire.com/?j1tu4zjmvm4, and on http://www.meistertrainer-downloads.de, where you can also find supporting files and graphics.

The 1.1 update is still available at http://www.file-upload.net/download-2003067/germany-oberligen-v1.1g.xml.zip.html, and is sufficient for people who wish to only go as far down as the 4th tier (Regionalliga). Even though 1.1 includes the 5th tier, anybody who wants to play there is encouraged to download 2.0 which overhauls the 5th tier substantially. Update: Older versions no longer recommended if you have patched to 10.2.

It's recommended to use this in conjunction with the supporting files (fake.Inc and Langnamendatei) from meistertrainer-downloads.de. An updated logo pack addon for the popular FMG09 logo pack is also available, adding logos for all the new clubs and competitions.

Details:

All German divisions down to the 6th tier (Verbandsliga) are playable.

The structure slightly deviates from real life because it can't be modeled in the editor. However, a good comprise was arrived at, taking into account a future change in the Oberliga system next season and drawing from historical data:

3 Regional Divisions (North, South, West) with 3 relegation spots each.

9 Oberliga Divisions (Nord, Niedersachsen, NOFV-Nord, NOFV-Süd, NRW-Liga, Hessen, Südwest, Baden-Württemberg, and Bayern) with 1 promotion and 3 relegation spot each.

Below that you have 27 divisions with one promotion and relegation spot each.

Oberliga Nord combines Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, the way it used to be in the past, and Oberliga Niedersachsen combines the current Niedersachsen Ost, Niedersachsen West and Bremen, which is similar to what will happen next year anyway. This is a better approach than keeping all 12 Oberligas and give a promotion spot to each, for a variety of reasons, but mainly because long-term games will see more realistic (and regionally accurate) movements between leagues and because it allowed for a cleaner way to add the 6th tier.

The 6th tier is mostly true to life, but some real-life divisions have been combined because there are 33 6th tier division in real life, and only 27 in the update.

A lot of work went into making the regional promotions and relegations work as realistically as possible by setting regional boundaries for the leagues and editing each club's regional division preference.

Other changes include added regional cups, missing stadiums, all the missing clubs from the 6th level and some from below, real-life managers for all clubs down to the 5th tier (the 6th tier is managerless), kits, and correct attendances.

Tested in various holiday games, up to 2025 without errors. The only thing that can occasionally happen is that a club ends up in a different regional division than it's supposed to, but after analyzing dozens of seasons this is not very often and typically not too annoying, because they're not too far off. (It's not completely avoidable anyway because some reshuffling sometimes needs to occur in the game and we can't model the provisions from real life where the league size or number of relegated teams change based on who gets relegated from above, so the game takes matters into its own hands).

Installation

Installation:

put the dbc file in My Documents > Sports Interactive > Football Manager 2010 > editor data

When clicking 'New Game' inside FM, you will get a dialog box appear called Choose Database.

Notice in this box it will have section saying Editor Data Files and a 'Change' tick button.

Clicking this button will allow you to select which of your files to load into your game.

Make sure not to load more than one file for the German leagues. Untick any previous versions of this update that you may have installed.

Change list

v2.1:

compatible with patch 10.2

added some more clubs so that all existing 6th tier divisions are filled with the correct clubs.

fixed problem of some free-transfer players playing games for another club, even after signing for a new one.

fixed bug that caused a crash in network games when clicking on certain clubs.

made German-Turkish clubs behave more like in real-life. they now create Turkish regens (with German 2nd nationality) and sign more Turkish players.

tuned region borders of divisions.

added managers for more 6th tier clubs.

added 2nd teams for all playable clubs and some 7th tier clubs.

fine-tuned attendances of lower leagues with real-life data.

v2.0:

added the 6th tier with 27 divisions, and created all the missing clubs.

created managers for all clubs down to 5th tier. The 6th tier clubs are still managerless at the start of a game.

added regional cups.

finetuned the borders and regional preferences of the clubs again, for an even more consistent behavior.

added second teams for all clubs down to 5th tier, and the most important 6th tier clubs.

finetuned finances, reputations, and attendances.

v1.1:

fixed bug of no winter breaks for the 4th and 5th tier.

fixed a bug with missing reputation of the Oberliga Niedersachsen, causing bizarre board expectations when managing in that league.

fine-tuned regional settings for many of the smaller clubs, so they appear in the right divisions.

added some awards for the lower divisions.

slightly changed scheduling to have fewer matches going on at the same time, thereby reducing the need to move fixtures due to shared stadiums.

Known Issues

Once in a while a club ends up in the wrong regional division. Great care has been taken to minimize these occurrences, but until SI fix a bug in the game it can't be avoided entirely. The good news is, even games you've started will be fine with a future patch, so you don't need to shy away from starting a long-term career.

What's being worked on for the next Version:

- we'll probably add the remaining missing managers to the 6th tier and update the rosters.

Anybody who is speaking German and wants to get involved is welcome to follow our thread at the German forum.

regionalligaclubs.jpg

oberligaclubs.jpg

Here's a screenshot of the Oberliga Nordost-Nord in 2025. Notice how the clubs are still regionally accurate.

non2025.jpg

Here's a new screenshot of v2.0:

vorschau.th.png

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After having a look at what's been done, I think an 18 division Verbandsliga would work (with, effectively, 2 divisions feeding into each Oberliga) You could then have the 18 champions go up automatically, with the runners up playing off for the remaining 9 spots. As there's a lot more real Verbandsligaen than we need, then something like this could work:

VBL Bremen/Hamburg

VBL Schleswig-Holstein

VBL Niedersachsen-Nord

VBL Niedersachsen-Sud (Just to vary from the Oberliga, which is East/West)

VBL Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

VBL Brandenburg/Berlin

VBL Sachsen-Anhalt

VBL Sachsen/Thuringen

VBL Nordrhein

VBL Westfalen

VBL Rheinland

VBL Sudwest

VBL Hessen-Nord

VBL Hessen-Sud

VBL Baden

VBL Wurttemberg

VBL Bayern-Ost

VBL Bayern-West

What do you think?

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CaptainFerret: That's actually not a bad idea, and it would save some work, because right now we're working on 27 instead of 18 Verbandsligas. The advantage of that is that we can use most of the existing divisions from real life for more realism, but I'll bring up this suggestion on the German forum because the idea of having nine fewer leagues to fill with clubs is quite appealing.

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For the love of humanity, I hope SI is working on an immediate patch 10.2, hopefully to be released within the next few weeks, to actually give us the flexibility to make these leagues playable. Then again, if they go through all that coding trouble, why not simply add the leagues to the game? But I hope the posts in these threads and elsewhere convince them to make this a priority and release something much sooner than a January transfer window update.

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For the love of humanity, I hope SI is working on an immediate patch 10.2, hopefully to be released within the next few weeks, to actually give us the flexibility to make these leagues playable. Then again, if they go through all that coding trouble, why not simply add the leagues to the game? But I hope the posts in these threads and elsewhere convince them to make this a priority and release something much sooner than a January transfer window update.

That' won't be the case. And it's obviously not a priority, as the game comes with tons of playable leagues out of the box. The editor makes it possible to add nearly every league and division, the only limitations are some special rules than can't be implemented yet. It's the first iteration of a competition editor and it´s one of the best additions they made in the last 10 years in my opinion.

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I'm with KUBI on this one. The key idea behind making a competition editor is that they don't have to divert so many resources to the implementation of obscure leagues but let the enthusiastic community do the work for them. I've been wanting this for a long time, and just look how it's taking off! The game has been released for not even a week and we have tons of user-created leagues available.

It's the first incarnation, and it's only going to get better I'm sure. I hope they'll work on this some more for the next version (maybe even the next Patch, but that's unlikely) to give us more flexibility in how we create the rules.

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I decided to take advantage of a day off in lieu and started creating the structure I outlined above (if the lads at meistertrainerforum want to use what I've done, then they're more than welcome to, or if they want to do something else, I'll probably grab that). I've populated 5 divisions of 18 teams so far, with stadia (with correctly set up cities, I couldn't do a lot past capacities with the couple of stadia I had to add in though). I missing kit information for a couple of teams too.

Brandenburg/Berlin

SV Altludersdorf

FC Stahl Brandenburg

Motor Eberswalde

EFC Stahl

FC Viktoria Frankfurt

MSV Neuruppin

FSV Union Furstenwalde

Oranienburger FC

SC Charlottenburg

Vfb Hermsdorf

SV Lichtenberg

Mariendorfer SV

Viktoria 89 Berlin

Union Berlin II

Hertha Zehlendorf

Babelsberg II

FC Schwedt 02 (No kits)

FC Hennigsdorf

Bayern East

1.FC Amberg (No away kit)

SpVgg Landshut

FC Heimstetten

BCF Wolfrathausen

VfL Frohnlach

ASV Neumarkt

TSV Eching

TSV Grossharden

FC Pipinsried

FC Falke Markt Schwaben

SV Pullach

DJK Vilzing

TuS Regensburg

DVV Coburg

SV Mitterteich

1.FC Passau

Regensburg II

Burghausen II

Bayern West

Kickers Wurzburg

FC Schweinfurt

SG Quelle Furth

SC Furstenfeldbruck

FC Gundelfingen

TSV Rain

SV Alemannia Haibach

FC Viktoria Kahl

TSV Landsberg

FC Kempten

SV Raisting

SC Feucht

ASV Vach

SC Eltersdorf

Neustadt/Aisch

1.FC Sand

TG Hochberg

TSV Aubstadt

Baden

Germania Forst

TV Hardheim

SG Heidelberg

FV Lauda

VfR Mannheim

SpVgg Neckarelz

FC Pforzheim

SV Schwetzingen

TSV Viernheim

FC Zuzenhausen

FC Konstanz

SV Linx

Offenburger FV

FC Ratstatt 04

FC Singen 04

FC Botzingen

SV Kirchzarten

SC Pfullendorf II

Bremen/Hamburg

SV Curslack

Concordia Hamburg

SC Condor Hamburg

VfL Lohbrugge

Oststeinbeker SV (No kits)

TSV Uetersen

USC Paloma

SG Aumund Vegesack

Bremer SV

OSC Bremerhaven

VfL Bremen

Blumenthaler SV

SV Grohn (No kit)

Habenhauser FV

TSV Melchiorshausen

TuS Schwachhausen

Turkspor Bremen

TSV Wulsdorf

I haven't set up the division boundaries yet (I was going to wait until I had all the teams in first), and if anyone thinks a particular team should be in any of these divisions, or has any of the missing kits info, then let me know.

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CaptainFerret: I've brought it up but the consensus seems to be that we want to go the route with 27 tier 6 divisions, for the following reasons:

- They have already been created anyway

- It is a very close approximation of real life, which has 33 tier 6 levels.

- Promotion/Relegation and the movement of teams between divisions in the post season will be more regionally accurate, i.e. there's no way to make a Bremen/Hamburg league like you propose and have the right clubs getting promoted/relegated because Bremen is basically surrounded by Niedersachsen.

The downside is that we need to create missing clubs to fill up the leagues, but we're working on it and it shouldn't take much longer.

Our structure is as follows:

1. OL Nord -> Verbandsliga Schleswig, Verbandsliga Holstein, Hamburg-Liga

2. OL Niedersachsen -> VL Niedersachsen West, VL Niedersachsen Ost, Bremen-Liga

3. OL NOFV-Nord -> VL Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg-Liga, Berlin-Liga

4. OL NOFV-Süd -> VL Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringenliga, Sachsenliga

5. NRW-Liga -> Niederrheinliga, Mittelrheinliga, Westfalenliga

6. OL Südwest -> Rheinlandliga, Saarlandliga, VL Südwest

7. Hessenliga -> VL Hessen Nord, VL Hessen Mitte, VL Hessen Süd

8. OL Baden-Württemberg -> VL Nordbaden, VL Südbaden, VL Württemberg

9. Bayernliga -> LL Bayern Nord, LL Bayern Mitte, LL Bayern Süd

For the most part these are existing leagues, so we know which teams to put where.

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CaptainFerret: I've brought it up but the consensus seems to be that we want to go the route with 27 tier 6 divisions, for the following reasons:

- They have already been created anyway

- It is a very close approximation of real life, which has 33 tier 6 levels.

- Promotion/Relegation and the movement of teams between divisions in the post season will be more regionally accurate, i.e. there's no way to make a Bremen/Hamburg league like you propose and have the right clubs getting promoted/relegated because Bremen is basically surrounded by Niedersachsen.

The downside is that we need to create missing clubs to fill up the leagues, but we're working on it and it shouldn't take much longer.

Our structure is as follows:

1. OL Nord -> Verbandsliga Schleswig, Verbandsliga Holstein, Hamburg-Liga

2. OL Niedersachsen -> VL Niedersachsen West, VL Niedersachsen Ost, Bremen-Liga

3. OL NOFV-Nord -> VL Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg-Liga, Berlin-Liga

4. OL NOFV-Süd -> VL Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringenliga, Sachsenliga

5. NRW-Liga -> Niederrheinliga, Mittelrheinliga, Westfalenliga

6. OL Südwest -> Rheinlandliga, Saarlandliga, VL Südwest

7. Hessenliga -> VL Hessen Nord, VL Hessen Mitte, VL Hessen Süd

8. OL Baden-Württemberg -> VL Nordbaden, VL Südbaden, VL Württemberg

9. Bayernliga -> LL Bayern Nord, LL Bayern Mitte, LL Bayern Süd

For the most part these are existing leagues, so we know which teams to put where.

Cool. Once it's done, I'll see if I can get a complete logo pack out (I've got about 530 teams already)

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The editor makes it possible to add nearly every league and division, the only limitations are some special rules than can't be implemented yet. It's the first iteration of a competition editor and it´s one of the best additions they made in the last 10 years in my opinion.

I was in agreement with you on this being one of the best additions in the history of the game until I got a chance to use the editor. Simply stated, it is almost entirely unusable for adding leagues with any level of realism. With all the coding they did for this, I can't understand why they didn't bother to allow two-leg playoffs, two-stage leagues, and the ability to assign distinct relegation systems for different divisions within the same level.

Those three items would have made a sizable number of leagues playable with perfect realism.

I tend to be more optimistic. Due to a number of bugs that have been found, including a major one involving relegations from levels added with the editor, I think they'll be releasing a 10.2 patch sooner rather than later.

I appreciate the work that The Amazing Dale Watkins has done to add the German lower leagues. Unfortunately, it won't be accurate enough for my personal comfort, but his work should help point the programmers to what they need to fix to make this feasible with realism.

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I doubt they'll add features to the Editor for a patch. Any patch will just fix bugs and finetune things. I bet realistic custom leagues isn't the highest priority on their agenda, so we can only hope for new features come FM 2011. Distinct promotion/relegation rules per division instead of per level would be a very welcome addition indeed.

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Dale, I apologise for going off-topic, but I don't think there could be a better place for me to get help!

I'm going to use a German db, but not a realistic one - 4 divisions, 18 teams/20/24/24.

What I'd like to know from you guys with German fixture knowledge is, are the 2 24 team divisions too heavy on the fixture list for Germany? Would the clubs struggle with all those matches regarding the winter break or cups?

Once again Dale I apologise :o, and thank you too. I don't mind being PMd, to save cluttering up the thread any more.

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Yes, this file adds the additional leagues to the German league structure, so all German leagues are playable :)

Cheers, but I haven't made my question clear enough, I think.

The file offers the German structure all the way down to 5th tier, but I just want to have the top 4 tiers active. Am I right in assuming I can just select those when starting a new game just like I could choose to have the top tier active only so far?

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Cheers, but I haven't made my question clear enough, I think.

The file offers the German structure all the way down to 5th tier, but I just want to have the top 4 tiers active. Am I right in assuming I can just select those when starting a new game just like I could choose to have the top tier active only so far?

Yes, you do not need to run the additional leagues :)

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Damn! Here I waited for FM2010 in the hopes of finally being able to manage Altona 93, but they managed to get relegated down to the Oberliga levels for 2009-10, and those levels re just too difficult to add to the game without completing ruining the realism. At least with the Regionalliga, you can easily activate the three divisions and still have 9 of the 10 relegation slots from real life. Ah well.

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I think we found a good balance of realism and playability.

That should be the main focus. The game is still far from being realistic, as the behaviour of the AI and all "people" in the game is not intelligent enough. But with a good balanced setting it creates it's own game reality and the game experience could have an atmosphere of realism.

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That should be the main focus. The game is still far from being realistic, as the behaviour of the AI and all "people" in the game is not intelligent enough. But with a good balanced setting it creates it's own game reality and the game experience could have an atmosphere of realism.

For me, realism isn't about rendering human psychological behavior and the myriad details of real football management. No simulation will ever be able to do that to a satisfactory level of detail and accuracy. But there are basic structural and factual things such as the rules of the game, league regulations, club information, and other details that should go without saying. Without those, the whole project is rather lacking.

How many people would find FM acceptable if promotions and relegations between the English Premier League and Championship were not correct or couldn't be edited properly? How about the Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga or Serie A and B?

To me, it is just as important to get these basic facts and structures correct for the lower leagues as it is for the top leagues. If you can't at least create a basic framework that is accurate, then I think it becomes much harder to suspend disbelief and enjoy the game as a reasonable simulation of football management.

So, for me, I'm just trying to identify lower leagues that can be activated and added with a high degree of realism in terms of basic structure and rules. Unfortunately, there are very, very few of them due to the limitations of the editor. The English levels 7 and 8, the German Regionalliga, and Italian Serie D are the only ones that are 90% to 100% accurate.

That's why my hope is for a patched editor that will deliver a lot more of the required options. Until then, I'll mostly play with the leagues that are already playable.

Then again, some people are perfectly happy with fictional leagues and such. Some might not even care if the EPL or Serie A are accurate. I just don't happen to be one of them.

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I hear you, and of course I would prefer if we could model the leagues realistically. I'm not too bothered by making a few changes though because quite frankly, the league structure for the lower leagues changes every few years in real life anyway. So how realistic is it to have the leagues of the 09/10 season still be untouched in 2015?

As an example, next year the Niedersachsenliga West and Niedersachsenliga Ost will be combined - we decided to make that change already for the current season. It's unrealistic now, but more realistic after the first season.

The leagues in the North are in a constant restructuring frenzy in Germany. Hardly two seasons go by without everything changing around again. It's another case where it doesn't bother me too much to use the old Oberliga Nord, which has way more history than the latest amalgam of tiny leagues at the 5th level. Who's to say they won't go back to that in real life in a couple of seasons?

For me, FM is a long-term game. If I was going to start over every season I might be bothered more.

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Another update: Version 1.1 is rapidly advancing now. The Oberliga data has been overhauled, 12 of 27 level 6 divisions are finished, and the remaining are being worked on. Still going to take a couple of days to finish the remaining leagues and merge them all together. After that we'll have to go through the data once more to fix remaining holes in the data, like missing team colors. After all is said and done, it'll be a massive data update weighing in at around 5mb.

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I have noticed a couple of team name changes you may or may not have in:

MSV Hanse Frankfurt are now MSV Eintracht Frankfurt

ASV Bergedorf are now FC Bergedorf (they've split from their parent multi sport group)

Thanks for those, I'll get them changed in the next research phase for either the 2nd or 3rd Official patch :)

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What's the error message? So far you're the only one with a problem, so it's probably not the file itself. Do you have any other data files checked or is it the only one?

How do I sent you a file with the error message.

It is an XML parsing error. It specifically says "not well-formed (invalid token) at line 8", and then lists the content of your file.

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What's the error message? So far you're the only one with a problem, so it's probably not the file itself. Do you have any other data files checked or is it the only one?

Sorry but one final comment.

Yes I do have a number of other data files but this error message only appears if I include your file.

Not when I exclude your file.

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Sorry but one final comment.

Yes I do have a number of other data files but this error message only appears if I include your file.

Not when I exclude your file.

It could be an interaction with the other data files that messes things up. First, try to only include this data and exclude the others and look if the error persists. If it does, try downloading the file again, maybe it got corrupted. If that doesn't help, try loading the file in the editor and save it again. Also, what OS do you use and do you have the patch installed?

There's going to be a new version of this anyway on Monday.

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It could be an interaction with the other data files that messes things up. First, try to only include this data and exclude the others and look if the error persists. If it does, try downloading the file again, maybe it got corrupted. If that doesn't help, try loading the file in the editor and save it again. Also, what OS do you use and do you have the patch installed?

There's going to be a new version of this anyway on Monday.

Hi Dale,

I'll try your suggestions tonight and reply on this forum tomorrow.

FM is patched and I use Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

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It could be an interaction with the other data files that messes things up. First, try to only include this data and exclude the others and look if the error persists. If it does, try downloading the file again, maybe it got corrupted. If that doesn't help, try loading the file in the editor and save it again. Also, what OS do you use and do you have the patch installed?

There's going to be a new version of this anyway on Monday.

It has become quite clear to me why it has failed.

When I look at the file downloaded it has the following content (nothing that represents the German Leagues from what I can see).

I have downloaded it several times now but still get the same output.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="de">

<head>

<title>File-Upload.net - Ihr kostenloser File Hoster!</title>

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

<meta name="keywords" content="File Upload, Upload, File, File-Upload, Datei Speicher, free Webspace, File Hosting, Pic Hosting, Image Hosting, kostenlos Datei hochladen" />

<meta name="description" content="Hier bietet sich die Möglichkeit, Ihre Fotos oder andere Dateien, Ihren Freunden oder der Familie bereitzustellen. Ganz einfach mit File Upload." />

<meta name="verify-v1" content="peBS06InOtCqnZJZ6xoFwM2luB+8ohrJ1Bq2bGjMzGA=" />

<meta name="Robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />

<meta name="Language" content="de" />

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.file-upload.net/style.css" />

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

<!-- Begin

function goToURL() { window.location = "http://www.file-upload.net/member/anmelden.php"; }

function abbrechen() { window.location = "http://www.file-upload.net"; }

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