A history of German club football through the medium of its Euro 24 venues

It's not quite complete, but the ten grounds being used for this summer's European Championships tell a decent version of the history of club football in Germany.

It’s certainly an impressive list, a tour through the cities of one of the greatest football nations of them all. From Hamburg in the north to Munich in the south, Euro 24 will take in ten cities that cover the history of German football, from the formation of the Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB) in 1900 to the present day.

Their very existence within German club football remains contentious, but RB Leipzig come from the city which gave birth to the game there. On the 28th January 1900 the DFB were founded in the city, and although there wouldn’t be a national league for more than six decades, the city was also the home of its first national champions, VfB Leipzig, in 1903.

Following partition in 1945, it took until 1966 for 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig to emerge. In Soviet East Germany, this was the railway workers club and they were reasonably successful, winning the DDR-Oberliga three times and the FDGB-Pokal four times. But the fall of the Berlin wall changed things again. Lokomotive changed their name to VfB Leipzig but failed to get a foothold and folded in 2004.

By 2008, the condition of the game in the city was looking pretty bleak. No team from the city had played at a professional level in a decade Matches at a lower level between the city’s two biggest remaining teams—a reformed Lokomotive and Chemie Leipzig—were often violent affairs. A city of half a million people with a stadium which had held matches at the 2006 World Cup could clearly support more.

The story of RB Leipzig is for another time, but what we can say for certain is that this city needed the return of professional football. Whether it should have been allowed to happen in the way in which it did is another matter altogether. Leipzigstadion will be hosting three group matches and a round of sixteen game.

By the time that the Nazis came to power thirty years later, the power base of German football had shifted 280 miles to the west. FC Schalke 04 had been formed in Gelsenkirchen in 1904 and rose to prominence in the 1920s. By the time that German football was reorganised in 1933, they were one of the country’s strongest teams. Between 1933 and 1942, the club would appear in 14 of 18 national finals (ten in the German championship and eight in the Tschammerpokal, the predecessor of the DFB-Pokal) in Germany, remaining unbeaten at home in the Gauliga Westfalen over 11 seasons and only losing six away matches.

Schalke’s final German title came in 1958, though they were founding members of the Bundesliga five years later. But in 1971, a number of the team's players and officials were accused of accepting bribes as part of the Bundesliga betting scandal. An investigation found that Schalke had deliberately played to lose a league match against Arminia Bielefeld by a goal to nil. As a result, several Schalke players were banned for life, including three regular West German internationals; Klaus Fischer, "Stan" Libuda and Klaus Fichtel.

The penalties were later commuted to bans ranging from six months to two years, but the scandal had a profound effect on a club that had been improving after a difficult start to life in this new national league. In 1973, the club moved to the Parkstadion, newly built for the 1974 FIFA World Cup, where they remained until moving to Arena AufSchalke in 2001.

But in recent years the club has struggled, with financial crises over 2020 and 2021 only being exacerbated by the sudden withdrawal of their biggest sponsor, Gazprom, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They Schalke remain moored in mid-table in the 2. Bundesliga, but nevertheless they’ll be hosting three group matches (including England’s opener against Serbia) and one round of sixteen match.

Among those chasing Schalke’s tails in the 1930s were Fortuna Dusseldorf, who were the national champions in 1933 and the runners-up in 1936, but who could add no more than this. The club was not among the original 16 chosen to form the Bundesliga, but did get a place in 1966 and again (following a relegation) in 1971. They won the DFB-Pokal in 1979 and 1980 and ran Barcelona all the way in the 1979 European Cup Winners Cup final before losing 4-3 after extra-time. Fortuna have become a yo-yo club since the late 1980s, and despite having been built to open in 2004 the 54,000-capacity Dusseldorf Arena wasn’t selected for the 2006 World Cup. This time around, they host three group matches, a round of sixteen match, and a quarter-final.

The first fifteen years after the Second World War were an understandably turbulent time for German football. Still without a national league, their success at the 1954 World Cup was a huge surprise at the time, far more so at the time than it looks with the benefit of hindsight. The spine of that World Cup-winning team came from Kaiserslautern, who aren’t hosting in this tournament, but one of their tougher challengers throughout this era were VfB Stuttgart, who were the national champions in 1950 and 1952 and DFB-Pokal winners in 1954 and 1958. Another founder member of the Bundesliga, Suttgart have been sporadically successful in the decades in between, winning the German title in 1984, 1992 and 2007. The Stuttgart Arena will host four group matches and a quarter-final.

But it was clear by the start of the 1960s that there was a need for a national league in West Germany. While Real Madrid ran away with the first five straight European Cups, German clubs weren’t doing anything at all. The first German club to reach a European Cup final was Eintracht Frankfurt, who’d lifted their first German league title a year earlier, but in front of a crowd of 134,000 at Hampden Park in May 1960 they were brushed aside 7-3 by a Real team for whom Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo di Stefano each scored a hat-trick. They’ll be hosting four group matches and a round of sixteen game.

When the decision was taken to finally form a single professional football league in 1962, the meeting was held in Dortmund. By this time, Borussia Dortmund had emerged as one of the country’s strongest teams. Champions of Germany in 1957 and 1958, they were also its champions in the last year before the Bundesliga started. It took them until 1995 to win the title again, but have won it a further five times since then while also adding a Champions League title in 1997. The BVB Stadion Dortmund (to give the place it’s UEFA-sanctioned non-sponsored name, as with all the others in this list) is hosting four group matches, a round of sixteen matches and a semi-final.

The first Bundesliga champions in 1964 were 1. FC Koln, who’d been formed in 1948 and by the time of the formation of the Bundlesliga had been champions of the prestigious regional league the Oberliga West five times. But the club couldn’t build on their success and were soon overtaken by others, although they did lose three cup finals in four years at the start of the 1970s and won the Bundesliga in 1978. Cologne Stadium was renovated for the 2006 World Cup finals, and will be hosting four group matches and a round of sixteen game.

But a new sheriff was soon to be in town. Bayern Munich weren’t even among the first sixteen clubs to be invited to join the Bundesliga in 1963. They didn’t have to wait long, though. They were allowed in two years later and in 1969 win their first Bundesliga title, becoming the champions of Germany for the first time since 1932. We all know what’s happened since 1969. Bayern have been the champions of Germany a further 31 times since then, including a record-breaking 11 in a row between 2012 and 2023. They’ve also been the winners of the European Cup or Champions League six times, including three times in a row between 1974 and 1976.

The club left the Grünwalder Stadion, their home since 1925, for the Olympiastadion in 1972, and two years later this stadium saw West Germany win the World Cup for the second time. But the Olympiastadion was unsatisfactory. The athletics track left spectators a long way from the pitch, while a lack of cover left them prone to the elements during the Bavarian winter. Renovation proved impossible because the architect kept vetoing plans. So eventually, the club decided to move to the Fußball Arena München (better known as the Allianz Arena, though it will not carry it sponsor’s name for this tournament) for the start of the 2005/06 season. The stadium will host four group matches including the opening match between Germany and Scotland, one round of sixteen game, and a semi-final.

Where there have been rivals to Bayern Munich, there have also been those who’ve challenged and eventually fallen. One such example is Hamburger SV, six times champions of Germany, three times winners of the DFB-Pokal and champions of Europe in 1983. Hamburg were the last of the original sixteen Bundlesliga clubs to be relegated in 2018, and they haven’t returned since. But they made headlines in England in the late 1970s with the signing of Kevin Keegan from Liverpool. Keegan, given the somewhat perplexing nickname of ‘Mighty Mouse’, became European Footballer of the Year at the end of his first season there, even though they only finished 9th in the table that season.

Hamburg were in their golden period, winning the Bundesliga in 1979, 1982 and 1983. Keegan returned to England in 1982, but the season after his departure was their most successful. Not only did they win the Bundesliga for the third time in five years, but they also won the European Cup, beating Juventus 1-0 in the final. It was their second go at this, having lost by the same scoreline to Nottingham Forest in Madrid three years earlier. But their relegation from the top flight turned out to be a fall from which the club still hasn’t quite recovered yet. Over the last six seasons they’ve finished third twice, losing in the play-offs both times, and fourth on four occasions. The Volksparkstadion will host four group matches and a quarter-final.

Throughout a tumultuous century and a quarter, Berlin has been at the heart of German football, though not always for reasons that had much to do with anything going on with its teams. The Olympiastadion was built on the site which had been selected for the subsequently cancelled 1916 Olympic Games and revived for the 1936 games, which had been awarded to the city in 1931 but which became a propaganda machine following the events of two years later.

The new stadium’s occupants, Hertha Berlin, had been the champions of Germany in 1930 and 1931, but these two years remain the only times that they’ve lifted the title. The partition of Berlin after the Second World War made supporting the club a difficult task for some within the city, all the more so when the wall went up in 1961. By the end of the 1980s, Hertha were playing regional league football after years of decline, but the reunification of East and West allowed the club to grow again, although silverware didn’t follow. The club were relegated, not for the first time, in 2023 and didn’t return at the end of last season, meaning that the Olympiastadion will become the first second division stadium to host a final in either the World Cup or the European Championships when it does so next month. Other than the final, it’ll also be hosting three group matches, a round of sixteen game, and a quarter-final.