Borussia Dortmund: Everything You Need To Know About Germany’s Best Club

You might not think that organised religion has a lot to do with the foundation of one of Germany’s most successful football clubs, but that’s where you’d be wrong. In 1909, a group of young men who played for Trinity Youth were unhappy about the club’s sponsorship by the Catholic church. As a result, a decision was taken to create a new club and Borussia Dortmund was born. The club would on to enjoy success in the lower leagues in Germany before being one of the founding clubs of the Bundesliga, enjoying success both domestically and on the international stage.

Although the club will always play second-fiddle, if it’s lucky, to Bayern Munich, there have been times when Die Borussen where the country’s most successful team. As is often the case with clubs on the continent, Borussia Dortmund isn’t just a football club and is instead a ‘sports club’ that works via membership. Having begun life with just 18 players, it boasted more than 189,000 members by 2023. That made it the fifth-largest sports club on the planet, playing in black and yellow and earning the nickname of die Schwarzgelben as a result.

The History of Borussia Dortmund

On the 19th of December 1909, a group of players from Trinity Youth decided to rebel against the team that they had been playing for. Sick of the influence of the Catholic church and being watched over by the stern and unsympathetic Father Dewald, the local parish priest, they met for a meeting in the local pub, Zum Wildschütz. Dewald got wind of what was happening and tried to break up the meeting, but the club’s founding members persisted and created the new team. They were:

• Franz Braun
• Paul Braun
• Henry Cleve
• Hans Debest
• Paul Dziendzielle
• Franz Jacobi
• Julius Jacobi
• Wilhelm Jacobi
• Hans Kahn
• Gustav Müller
• Franz Risse
• Fritz Schulte
• Hans Siebold
• August Tönnesmann
• Heinrich Unger
• Robert Unger
• Fritz Weber
• Franz Wendt

The group of players decided to give the club a name that might well have been intended as a rebellion against the religious nature of the former side they played for, given that Borussia is the Latin for Prussia and was taken from the nearest Borussia brewery in the city. Initially, the club played in blue and white striped shirts with a red sash and black shorts, not donning the now-famous yellow and black for the first time until 1913.

Modest Success & the Rise of the Third Reich

During Borussia Dortmund’s formative years, the club enjoyed limited success. They played in local teams and were under threat of bankruptcy in 1929, largely because of a decision to sign some professional players that didn’t work out. That left the team in some considerable debt, but the generosity of one of the local supporters helped them stave off the club’s collapse when he funded things out of his own pocket. Meanwhile, away from the football pitch, the rise of the Third Reich was happening around Germany and leading to the restructuring of sports organisations around Germany.

#AntiSemitism rears its head in #Germany, as #neonazi protesters march uninterrupted in the city of Dortmund, holding Swastika flags, praising the Third Reich, and calling for the destruction of #Israel

— Noorani Tejani (@NooraniTejani) October 2, 2019

The aim was to ensure that football clubs and the like would be reorganised in order to suit the goal of the new regime. When Borussia Dortmund’s President refused to join the Nazi Party he was simply replaced. That didn’t stop others at the club moving against Adolf Hitler and his party, with some using the club offices to produce anti-Nazi pamphlets and being executed for their troubles. There was a degree of success for Dortmund in the newly formed Gauliga Westfalen, but no real breakthrough was made until after the end of the Second World War and the downfall of the Third Reich.

When the Allies won the war, there was a decision taken to dissolve the majority of sports clubs in the country in order to distance them as much as possible from the Nazi Party. Having seen an intense rivalry emerge with Schalke 04 from Gelsenkirchen, Borussia Dortmund was dissolved. A brief attempt to merge the club with Werksportgemeinschaft Hoesch and Freier Sportverein 98 came next, with the club’s debut in the league actually coming as Ballspiel-Verein Borussia in 1949, losing 3-2 to VfR Mannheim.

Winning the Title & Forming the Bundesliga

For nearly 20 years after the end of the Second World War, Dortmund played their games in the Oberliga West, which was the dominant first division in Germany throughout the 1950s. The first title for Dortmund came in 1956 when they reached the final of the competition and defeated Karlsruher SC 4-2. A year later and the club defended its title, this time beating Hamburger SV 4-1. It was done under the play of what became known as the ‘three Alfredos’, thanks to the skill of Alfred Preißler, Alfred Kelbassa and Alfred Niepieklo. Another title was to come in 1963, which always also the final year of the German Football Championship.

In 1962 a meeting of the DFB in Dortmund decided that a professional football league would be formed in Germany. It was to begin playing in the August of 1963 and be given the title of the ‘Bundesliga’. There were 16 clubs that would play in this newly formed league, of which Borussia Dortmund would be one on account of the fact that they had won the final German Football Championship. The club’s first game was a 3-2 defeat to Werder Bremen, although Dortmund player Friedhelm Konietzka had the honour of scoring the first goal of the new era just a minute into the game.

Success Marred by Financial Problems

In 1965, Borussia Dortmund won the DFB-Pokal for the first time in the club’s history. It allowed them to play in the following season’s European Cup Winners’ Cup, reaching the final. It was in the final where they played a team that their paths would cross with in numerous ways in the future, Liverpool. The German team ran out 2-1 winners after extra-time, thanks to goals from Sigfried Held and Reinhard Libuda. It looked as though they were also going to win the Bundesliga for the first time, only to surrender their lead thanks to four losses in their final five games, missing out to 1860 München by three points.

There was a lesson to be learned for Dortmund in that much of 1960’s success came thanks to Konietzka, who had transferred from Dortmund not long before the title loss. Any success that the club enjoyed in the 1960s seemed like a distant memory by the time that the 1970s rolled around. The club suffered major financial issues, thanks in no small part to relegation out of the Bundesliga in 1972. In 1974 Dortmund opened a new stadium that they decided to name after the Westphalia region in which it was based, with the Westfalenstadion opening its doors two years prior to the club returning to the Bundesliga.

Even so, the financial issues that had dogged Dortmund in the 1970s continued into the 1980s. In 1986 they had to play a play-off game in order to avoid relegation having finished the season proper in 16th. The game was against Fortuna Köln and they won it, but it was to be their last taste of success for the next few years. When they did eventually enjoy some more silverware, it came via defeat of Werder Bremen in the DFB-Pokal, with Borussia Dortmund winning the final 4-1. That was manager Horst Köppel’s first taste of silverware, putting them in the DFL-Supercup against Bayern Munich, which Dortmund won 4-3.

The First Golden Age

Although he had delighted fans with the win in the DFB-Pokal ad the DFL-Supercup, a tenth-place finish at the end of the 1990-1991 campaign meant that Köppel was given his marching orders. He was replaced by Ottmar Hitzfeld, who led the club to a second-place finish in 1992, only missing out on the title because VfB Stuttgart won their final game of the season. In the 1992-1993 season, the club finished fourth in the Bundesliga at the same time as making it to the final of the UEFA Cup. Sadly, the Germans lost that by an aggregate score of 6-1 to Juventus, but the prize money system meant that they won 25 million Deutsche Marks.

With the money from their European success, Dortmund were able to bring in players that would help them to enjoy some genuine success. Matthias Sammer, who would be named the European Footballer of the Year in 1996, was named club captain and helped his side to back-to-back Bundesliga titles in 1995 and 1996. The club also won the DFL-Supercup in both of those seasons against Borussia Mönchengladbach and 1. FC Kaiserslautern respectively. The league win put the club in the European Cup, which they reached the final of the first time. They faced holders Juventus, winning 3-1 with a goal scored by 20-year-old Lars Ricken securing the victory.

That saw the end of Hitzfeld’s time in charge, with Nevio Scala given the unenviable job of replacing him. The German’s had to play Cruzeiro, a Brazilian side, in the Intercontinental Cup, winning 2-0 in order to be official crowned the best club team in the world. In doing so, Dortmund became just the second German club after Bayern Munich to win it. They reached the semi-final of the newly re-branded Champions League the following season, losing out to Real Madrid, lately due to the fact that numerous important players were missing for most of the season.

Going Public in the New Millennium

In the October of 2000, Borussia Dortmund became the first German club to be publicly traded on the stock market. Two years later and the club won the Bundesliga title for the third time, boasting a remarkable run towards the end of the season that allowed them to overhaul Bayer Leverkusen. Former player Matthias Sammer had taken on the manager’s role, becoming the first person in the history of the competition to win the Bundesliga as both a player and a manager. They also reached the final of the UEFA Cup that season, losing out to theDutch side Feyenoord. That triggered the start of a steady decline for Die Borussen.

As is so often the case, the biggest trigger for this was poor financial management that led to a large amount of debt being placed on the club. Eventually a decision was taken to sell the Westfalenstadion grounds, with the situation being made even worse when the club missed out on the Champions League thanks to a qualifying round defeat by Club Brugge. There even came a point in which Bayern Munich had to loan Borussia Dortmund €2 million just so the wages could be paid. By 2005, the club was once again staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, with the original share value of €11 dropping more than 80%.

Hans-Joachim Watzke was appointed as the club’s new Chief Executive Officer, immediately moving to streamline things as much as he could. This included a 20% pay cut for the players, as well as a sponsorship deal being signed for the naming rights of the Westfalenstadion. It became Signal Iduna Park, with the local insurance company agreeing to sponsor the ground until 2021. After a poor start to the 2005-2006 campaign, the club rallied and finished seventh, whilst he sale of several key players allowed them to report a profit for the first time in a years. In spite of this, they only narrowly avoided relegation in 2007.

The Klopp Era

Having avoided relegation and then finishing in 13th in 2008, the club made it to the DFB-Pokal final only to lose 2-1 to Bayern Munich. The fact that Bayern were already in the Champions League allowed Dortmund to qualify for the UEFA Cup, but at the end of the season Thomas Doll resigned as the manager. It meant that Die Borussen had to find a new manager, with a young up and coming one named Jürgen Klopp having impressed at Mainz 05. His side immediately improved on the Bundesliga performance of the previous year, ending up in fifth and making it into the Europa League, only narrowly missing out on a Champions League place.

As the 2010-2011 campaign got underway, Klopp opted for a young and vibrant team, becoming the Herbstmeister, or ‘Autumn Champion’, when they were at the top of the table during the winter break. Not only had the managed to do it, but they also did it with three matches to spare, matching the accolade of being the quickest achieved by Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Kaiserslautern. When Dortmund defeated 1. FC Nurnberg 2-0 with two game weeks to go, the loss of second-place Bayern Leverkusen meant that Die Borussen were champions. It was the club’s fourth title, matching their rivals of Schalke 04.

@fty_7.1

emotional farewell by jurgen klopp a leaving legend at dortmund❤️

♬ original sound – ftbl2

A year later and Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund successfully defended the Bundesliga title, once again with two games still to play. They did so whilst setting a record for the most points gained by a club in a single Bundesliga season, although the record only lasted a year before Bayern Munich surpassed it. It was the fifth Bundesliga title won by Dortmund and eighth German title overall, allowing the club to begin wearing two stars above the crest on its shirt in recognition of its domestic success. The season was completed thanks to a DFB-Pokal double when they defeated Bayern 5-2 in the final.

The 2012-2013 season saw them miss out on silverware to Bayern Munich not once but twice. They finished second in the league, with Munich winning it, whilst they also reached their second Champions League title. The final was against the German rivals and was played at Wembley Stadium, losing 2-1. They did win the DFL-Supercup against Bayern the following season, but injuries to key players stopped them from being able to finish any higher than fourth. When the 2014-2015 league campaign began in curiously poor form, Jürgen Klopp decided that the right thing to do would be to stand down at the end of the season.

Life After Klopp

When Klopp left Borussia Dortmund, he was replaced in the manager’s role by the man who had replaced him at Mainz, Thomas Tuchel. After six matches the club stood top of the table thanks to six straight wins. They would go on to win 24 out of 34 Bundesliga games, making them the best runners-up in the competition’s history. They made it to the quarter-finals of the Europa League, only to come up against their former manager at his new club. Having drawn 1-1 at the Westfalenstadion, Dortmund looked certain to progress at the expense of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, only for the Merseysiders to win 4-3 and 5-4 on aggregate in dramatic fashion.

The DFL-Pokal saw a little bit of history repeating, with Dortmund making it the final but losing to Bayern Munich for the third time in a row. In the April of 2017, drama struck when three explosions took place close to the team bus as it made its way towards Signal Iduna Park for a Champions League tie with Monaco. Marc Barta, the club defender, was injured, but UEFA determined that the match should go ahead. The home side lost 2-3 and were defeated 3-1 in the return leg for a 6-3 aggregate defeat. They reached the DFB-Pokal final thanks to victory over Bayern Munich in the semi-final, defeating Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1 in the final.

Thomas Tuchel decided to step down before the start of the 2017-2018 campaign, with Peter Bosz coming in to replace him. Having enjoyed a record-breaking start to the campaign in the first seven games, the club then failed to win their next 20 and Bosz was relieved of his position. Peter Stöger was given the role on a temporary basis, remaining in charge for the rest of the season and seeing them finish in fourth-place in the Bundesliga. Lucien Favre became the next permanent manager, bringing in eight new players and taking the title to the final day of the season but eventually missing out by just two points.

What followed were a couple of seasons of second-place finishes, with the most painful coming on the final day of the 2022-2023 campaign when Die Borussen were top heading into it. When they drew 2-2 with Mainz, it handed the Bundesliga title to Bayern Munich on goal difference. Having already lost star striker Erling Haaland to Manchester City, the club then saw Jude Bellingham depart for Real Madrid. A disappointing league campaign followed, which the club made worse by announcing that a military weapons manufacturer would be the sponsor for the future, much to the annoyance of supporters.

Borussia Dortmund’s Stadiums

When Borussia Dortmund first started playing football, they did so at the Stadion Rote Erde. Located next door to where Dortmund play their games nowadays and currently serving as the stadium for Borussia Dortmund II, it was clear that the team would need a bigger home stadium as the club’s popularity increased. As the city itself was unable to fund the building of a new ground and federal institutions couldn’t help, it looked as though a new home was a no-go. Then, in 1971, luck happened to strike in the form of Cologne having to pullout of being a host stadium for the World Cup three years later.

The funds that had been put to one side for Cologne were redirected to Dortmund, allowing for the building of the Westfalenstadion. As you might imagine, the stadium has undergone numerous changes and renovations in the years that have followed, thanks in no small part to the need to increase the size. In 2008, two years after it was used as the host venue for another World Cup, the Borusseum opened, offering a Borussia Dortmund-themed museum for visitors to the ground. There have also been modernisations brought in, such as in 2011 when an agreement with Q-Cells saw nearly 9,000 solar panels installed on the roof.

Boasting the highest average attendance of any football club in the world, the Westfalenstadion has one thing that helps it to stand out from the crowd: the Yellow Wall. Sitting at 328 foot long and 131 foot high, the Südtribüne of the stadium packs in almost 25,000 people for every home game. It is one of the most impressive sights in football and has been used as the starting off point for stands built at both Tottenham Hostpur’s new stadium and the new stadium of Everton. The largest grandstand in Europe is designed to intimidate the opposition and drive Dortmund home as the search for a goal or to hold into the win.

The Club’s Crest & Colours

The crest of Borussia Dortmund lacks the romance of some other football clubs. Since the moment that one was created in 1945, it has been made up of the yellow and black colours that Die Borussen is known for. The first crest, which lasted until 1964, had the letters BVB and the number 09 above the word ‘Dortmund’ written in black on a yellow background. In 1964 that changed slightly, with the background being black and the letters of Borussia Dortmund being in yellow. In the centre of that crest are the letters BVB and the numbers 09, this time in black with the centre being yellow, which remained the case for ten years.

From 1974 to 1976 and the again between 1978 and 1993, the club went for a black circle surrounding a yellow circle, with ‘BVB 09’ being all that was written there. The brief gap between 1976 and 1978 came courtesy of a new design that had a yellow lion on a black background in the centre of the crest, encircled by the letters ‘BV Borussia 09 e.V.’ on the top and ‘Dortmund’ on the bottom. That was short-lived, whilst in 1993 a new crest that is similar to the previous one was put in place with just ‘BVB 09’ on offer. 2012 also saw the club allowed to have two stars above the crest on account of the fifth Bundesliga win.

Dortmund’s Finances

There have been several occasions during the history of Borussia Dortmund when the club has struggled financially. The way it is structured nowadays involved the management board working with a board of directors, which is made up of a President, a Proxy, a Vice-President and a Treasurer. Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA is the organisation responsible for the running of the professional football side of the club, with the corporation model meaning that there is one partner with limited liability and one with unlimited liability in place at any given moment.

When the stock of Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA was floated on the stock market in the October of 2000, it became the first publicly traded sports club in Germany, which has remained the case at the time of writing. The club’s ownernship is made up of 4.61% of Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA is owned by the sports club, Borussia Dortmund e.V.; 8.24% by Bernd Geske; and 67.24% widely spread shareholdings. When the Deloitte Football Money League was published in 2015, the club had generated revenues of €262 million for 2013-2014.

Rivalries

When it comes to rivalries, there are a few that Dortmund fans are likely to point to. When Borussia Dortmund come up against Bayern Munich, for example, the game is known as Der Klassiker and is viewed in a similar manner to El Classico between Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain. There is also a fierce rivalry in place between Dortmund and Schalke 04, largely on account of the fact that they are two of the biggest teams in the North Rhine-Westphalia district of Germany.

Today’s #BackGardenBundesliga on #derKlassiker as some now call it. Borussia Dortmund-Bayern München the rivalry of the modern German football era but not one steeped in decades of tradition. Enjoy! #BVBFCB pic.twitter.com/WOPlgUqFoV

— Derek Rae (@RaeComm) May 25, 2020

Whenever any two teams form the Ruhr play one another, such as Dortmund v Schalke, it is known as the Revierderby. There is also an argument that Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool have suffered a bit of a rivalry over the years, largely thanks to the departure of Jürgen Klopp to the Anfield club and the fact that his team then knocked his former one out of the UEFA Cup.