Munich’s ‘other’ professional football team, is TSV 1860 Munich (the TSV stands for Gymanstics and Sports Club).  Aka ‘Die Löwen‘ (The Lions), the club was originally formed in 1848.  However, it was subsequently banned due to ‘republican activities’, before reforming again in …1860.

In the 1920s and 30s, 1860 were the dominant club in Munich.  In 1926, they completed the building of their stadium at Grünwalder Straße and in 1931 reached the final of the German Championship (played then between regional league winners).

However, by 1937 their fortunes had become so bad that they were forced to sell the stadium to City (who remain the owners to this day).

Cup winners and founder members of the Bundesliga
In 1942 they won the German Cup and in 1963 were chosen ahead of Bayern to represent Munich in the newly formed Bundesliga.

The Lions of Munich

The glory, glory years
The next few years saw them enoy their greatest spell of success to date.  In 1964, they won the German Cup again and a year later only fell at the final hurdle in European Cup Winners Cup, losing the final – played at Wembely – to West Ham.  Despite this disappointment, they went on to win their first – and to date only – Bundesliga title the following year and were runners-up in 1967.

The dark days begin
By the end of the 1960s, however, the club’s heyday was over.  They were relegated at the end of the 1969/70 season and played second flight football for the next 7 years.  Promotions in 1977 and ’79 were both soon followed by relegation.  And worse was to come!

FA sends the club down
Every year in German football, the professional clubs have to have their ‘licence’ renewed by the German FA.  If it is not renewed, they can no longer play in the professional league.

In 1982 the FA ruled that 1860′s financial position was too precarious for professional football and withdrew their licence, resulting in enforced relegation to the semi-amateur third flight – in 1860′s case the Bavarian Upper League.

Their 'ancestral' home, the Stadium on Grünwalder Straße

And there they languished for nearly a decade until, after one brief season back in the second flight in 1991/92, followed by immediate relegation, they achieved the previously unheard of feat of promotion from the third flight to top tier of German football in two consecutive promotion seasons.

Despite this return to the Bundesliga in 1994, the glory days did not come back and after seven seasons of largely mid-table performance they dropped out of the top flight again in 2004.

New stadium and financial scandal
Having in the interim committed to a 50:50 partnership with Bayern for the new Allianz Arena, and suffered the embarrasment of seeing their chairman and his son arrested for financial irregularities in connection with stadium construction tenders, the club had hoped desperately for an immediate return to the top flight in 2004/05.  However, they lost out to Eintracht Frankfurt on the final day of the season and thus remain – for now – very much the poor relation to their mighty neighbour, Bayern.

TSV 1860 official website (in German only)

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German champions
1966

German Cup winners
1942, 1964

German championship runners-up
1931, 1967

South German champions
1963, 1979

European Cup Winners Cup finalist
1965

Biggest victory
9-0 home vs. Karlsruhe, 27.02.65

Heaviest defeat
6-0 away at Hertha BSC Berlin, 08.03.03

Game with the most goals
9-2 home win over Hamburg, 07.03.64

Player records

Most games
Top flight: Harald Cerny, 238 games
All levels: Georg Metzger, 282 games

Most goals
Top flight: Rudolf Brunnenmeier, 66 goals
All levels: Andreas Löbmann, 98 goals

Bundesliga top scorers while at 1860
1964/1965: Rudolf Brunnenmeier, 24 goals
1999/2000: Martin Max, 19 goals
2001/2002: Martin Max, 18 goals

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Early days
The club began life at the turn of the last century, as in 1900 eleven players broke away from an earlier Munich club formed in 1879 to create FC Bayern München. Not being particularly sound financially, this new club then merged in turn with Munich SC in 1906.

The 1920s
After the First World War, Munich SC was no longer running, so FC Bayern joined up with TV Jahn Munich in the immediate post-war years, going their separate ways again from 1923, from which date Bayern Munich has continued to exist in its own right.

Bayern miss Bundesliga start
When West Germany’s regional football leagues were finally organised into a national league, the Bundesliga, for the 1963/64 season, Bayern missed out.

With admission to the league based on performances over the previous 12 years, plus financial considerations and a ruling that there could not be more than one founding club from any one city, Bayern lost out, with 1860 Munich representing the Bavarian capital when the new national league kicked off its first season.

18 championships since 1965
However, the club gained promotion to the Bundesliga in 1965 and immediately took third place the following season. Since then, Bayern has gone on to win the title no less than 18 times (up to the 2004/05 season) and has become by a long way the most successful club in Germany.

From 1965 to 1972 the club played at the Grünwalder Stadion, from 1972 to 2005 at the Olympic Stadium and from the start of the 2005/06 season has been at the newly built Allianz Arena.

Ex-players on the board
The club hierarchy is full of famous players from Bayern’s past. Their president is Franz Beckenbauer (who played 396 times for the club from 1965-76), the chairman is Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (162 goals in 310 games from 1974-84), and Uli Hoeness (3 times league title winner with Bayern between 1970-78) is deputy chairman. All of which not infrequently leads to less than helpful comments from on high for the incumbent head coach, at the time of writing Felix Magath.

Official Bayern Munich website (in English)

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German Championship Plate

German Super Cup winners: 1983 (unofficial), 1987, 1990, 2010
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South German champions: 1926, 1928
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Bavarian champions: 1910, 1911, 1926, 1928,
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South Bavarian champions: 1910, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1920, 1923, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1944
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Upper Bavarian champions: 1904, 1905, 1908, 1917, 1918, 1945

3 x European Cup Winner + 1 x Champions League

European Cup/Champions League winners: 1974, 1975, 1976, 2001
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UEFA Cup winners: 1996
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European Cup Winners Cup winners: 1967
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Intercontinental Cup: 1976, 2001

Famous past players
There are so many!  Here are just a few of perhaps the best-known outside Germany:

Michael Ballack
Former German national team captain.  Midfielder who is very strong in the air in the opponents’ penalty area. Started his Bundesliga career at 1 FC Kaiserslautern and made his name at Bayer Leverkusen, before moving to Bayern in 2002.  Moved to Chelsea in May 2006. Returned to Bayer Leverkusen in 2010.

Franz Beckenbauer
‘Der Kaiser’.   Won everything – including the World Cup – as both player and manager.  Also played in the final years of his career for Hamburg SV and New York Cosmos. Now honorary president of Bayern.

Mark Hughes
It’s often forgotten by English football fans that Manchester United legend Hughes spent the 1987/88 season on loan with Bayern from Barcelona.

Long-time keeper Oliver Kahn

Oliver Kahn
Bayern’s former club captain and highly successful goalkeeper.  Began his career at Karlsruhe before moving in 1994 to Bayern for €2.3m.  He went on to help Bayern win the German championship 8 times before hanging up his gloves in 2008.

Jürgen Klinsmann
Much travelled during his playing career, Klinsmann played for Bayern from 1995-97, having joined from Spurs.  Former ‘Footballer of the Year’ in both Germany and England.  Now German national team coach.

Sepp Maier
Legendary goalkeeper for club and country.  Holds the record as the Bayern player to have played the most games ever in the Bundesliga (473).  Joined the club in 1959 and went on to become long-standing goalkeeping coach.

Lothar Matthäus
Played 302 games for Bayern, during which time he played 90 times for the national side.  Between 1980 and 2000 he played a total of 150 times for the national team, a record for such appearances.  He won 7 league titles with Bayern.

Gerd Müller
‘Der Bomber’.  Diminutive, stocky goal-poacher he rates as the most successful striker in German footballing history with 68 goals in 62 games for West Germany and 365 in 427 Bundesliga games between 1965 and 1979 for Bayern.  He was the top goalscorer in the Bundesliga seven times and Footballer of the Year twice.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge
Played for Bayern from 1974-84.  Twice ‘European Footballer of the Year’.  Capped 95 times by West Germany.  Now club chairman.

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Champions League
The club twice reached the final of the German Cup at the end of the 70′s and made it to the semi-final of the UEFA Cup in 1979. They reached the group stage of the Champions League in 2000 and won the German League Cup in 2001 and 2002.

Ship shape and Berlin fashion!
The club was formed in 1892 by two sets of brothers, Fritz and Max Linder and Otto and Willi Lorenz. The club’s name comes from a boat trip that Fritz Linder took with his father. The name of the shipping company emblazoned on the funnel was ‘Hertha’ and the company’s colours were blue and white. Hence the name, the team colours and even the colour of the running track today at the Olympic Stadium!

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You’ll find it here: www.theworldcupingermany.com. It’s showing some signs of age now, but much of the information is still relevant.

Hope you find that useful… and come back here in due course when I’ve had time to get everything finished on this site.

Cheers,

Jon

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You’ll find it here: www.theworldcupingermany.com. It’s showing some signs of age now, but much of the information is still relevant.

Hope you find that useful… and come back here in due course when I’ve had time to get everything finished on this site.

Cheers,

Jon

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You’ll find it here: www.theworldcupingermany.com. It’s showing some signs of age now, but much of the information is still relevant.

Hope you find that useful… and come back here in due course when I’ve had time to get everything finished on this site.

Cheers,

Jon

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You’ll find it here: www.theworldcupingermany.com. It’s showing some signs of age now, but much of the information is still relevant.

Hope you find that useful… and come back here in due course when I’ve had time to get everything finished on this site.

Cheers,

Jon

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Then when the club was reformed after the First World War, it merged again with Frankfurt’s athletics club to form the ‘Eintracht Frankfurt Athletics and Sports Club of 1861′. In 1927, the athletics section split away again, with football then coming under the ‘Eintracht Frankurt Sports Club of 1899′.

German champions
Eintracht Frankfurt achieved their greatest domestic success to date by winning the German championship in 1959.

With the German league still structured at that time on a regional basis and the ultimate national champions decided by an end-of season inter-champions tournament, Eintracht beat local rivals Kickers Offenbach 5-3 in the final in Berlin.

European success
The following year, Eintracht became the first German team to reach a European Cup Final.

Alas, in the final in Glasgow, they were trounced 7-3 by the then unbeatable Real Madrid.

Founder member of the Bundesliga
In 1963, Eintracht Frankfurt was one of the founding members of the national league, the Bundesliga. The club managed to stay in the top flight for the next 33 years, before finally being relegated in 1996.

Cup winners
During that time, Eintracht won the German FA Cup on four occasions, in successive years in 1974 and 1975, and again in 1981 and 1988. In 1980, the club achieved its greatest success so far, by winning the UEFA Cup, beating Borussia Mönchengladbach in the final.

A missed title and relegation
In 1992, the club lost its last game of the season at already relegated Hansa Rostock and thus missed out by 2 points on the Bundesliga title, which ultimately went to VfB Stuttgart. Following their first ever relegation from the Bundesliga in 1996, Eintracht then became very much a yo-yo club.

Promotion and relegation
They won promotion back to the top-flight in 1998. In the next two seasons, they just managed to stay up, winning their battle against relegation on the very last day. But in 2001, they were relegated again.

Financial problems
The footballing side of the club was reorganised at this time into a separate limited company, but in 2002 financial problems almost saw them have their professional football licence withdrawn. A year later, however, they were promoted again and at the end of the 2003/4 season again stayed up on goal difference, only to go down again a year later.

Back in the top flight
After just one year in the second flight, they bounced back and – at the time of writing (October 2005) – are again in the top tier of German football … albeit languishing in the relegation zone!

Pictures on this page courtesy of Eintracht Frankfurt / Andreas Wolf.

Eintracht Frankfurt official website (German only)

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