Kreisliga Saar

The Kreisliga Saar (English: District league Saar) was the highest association football league in the Territory of the Saar Basin, governed by a League of Nations mandate, and parts of the Bavarian region of Palatinate and the Prussian Rhine Province from 1919 to 1923. The league was disbanded with the introduction of the Bezirksliga Rheinhessen-Saar in 1923.

The league was named after the Saar River.

From 1907, four regional leagues were formed within the structure of the Southern German football championship, in a move to improve the organisation of football in Southern Germany, these being:

In 1908, a first Westkreis-Liga (English: Western District League) was established. With the outbreak of the First World War, league football came to a halt and, during the war, games were only played on a limited level.

With the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, no Westkreis championship was played in 1918-19 but football returned to a more organised system in 1919.

Southern Germany, now without the Alsace and Lorraine regions, the later having been part of the Westkreis and had to be returned to France, was sub-divided into ten Kreisligas, these being:

The new Kreisliga Saar was made up from eight clubs from the Westkreis region. The league winners of the Kreisligas advanced to the Southern championship. This system applied for the 1919-20 and 1920-21 season, with the league being expanded to ten clubs for the later.

In 1921-22, the Kreisliga Saar was split into two groups of eight, increasing the number of tier-one clubs in the region to 16. The two league winners then played a final to determine the Saar champion, which in turn advanced to a Rheinhessen-Saar championship final against the Hessen champion. This "watering down" of football in the region lasted for only one season, in 1922-23, the number of top clubs was reduced to eight clubs in a single division, with a Rheinhessen-Saar final against the Hessen champion once more.