FM14: SG Dynamo Dresden - Im Herzen Vereint! (2024)

Sportgemeinschaft Dynamo Dresden e. V., commonly known as simply SG Dynamo Dresden or Dynamo Dresden, is a German association football club, based in Dresden, Saxony. It was founded on 12 April 1953, as a club affiliated with the East German police, and became one of the most popular and successful clubs in East German football, winning eight league titles. After the reunification of Germany, Dynamo played four seasons in the top division Bundesliga (1991–95), but have since drifted between the second and fourth tiers. The club achieved promotion to the 2. Fußball-Bundesliga for the 2011–12 season. Dynamo play home games at the Glücksgas-Stadion, capacity of 32,085.

HISTORY

The beginnings - football in Dresden in 19th century: Dresden English Football Club

The Dresden English Football Club was founded on 18 March 1874. In April 1874, the Illustrirte Zeitung of Leipzig reported on the establishment of an association "calling itself Dresden Football Club (D.F.C.)" to play a game "in which the ball is propelled forward with the foot", and described: "some twenty young men in a costume, namely in different colours to distinguish them. A kind of woollen or silk underjacket, with or without sleeves, short-fitting leg coverings that show the bare knee, long stockings, very comfortable shoes or lace-up boots make up the ensemble."

The club was the first football club in Germany, probably the first in continental Europe and thus the first outside Britain. That year, over 70 players participated, primarily Englishmen working in Dresden. They played on a meadow at the Güntzwiesen, near the Blüherpark and the site of today's Glücksgas Stadium.

1890s

Between 1891 and 1894, seven matches are documented, the first six of which the Dresden team won; as a Vienna sports paper reported, they had not even allowed a goal to be scored against them. Their goal ratio was 34:0. In a match played on New Year's Day 1891, they defeated the English F.C. of Berlin 7:0; according to an account published in 1898 by the founding vice president of the German Football Association, Philipp Heineken, the Berliners described their play as nonplusultra. On 18 April 1892 at Berlin, in the presence of representatives of the Ministry of Culture and of the British ambassador, they won 3:0 against a representative city team; this was presumably the Deutscher Fußball- und Cricketbund, which had the status of an early national German team. Their first defeat, on 10 March 1894, was a 2:0 loss to another Berlin team, Tor und Fußball Club Victoria 89, with both goals scored in the first ten minutes.

Players in 1894 were: Beb (Captain), Burchard, Crossley, Graham, Atkins, Spencer, Ravenscraft, Johnson, le Maistre, Luxmoore, Young. The president of the club was Rev. Bowden.

On 30 April 1898, former members of the Dresden English Football Club and of the Neue Dresdner FC (founded in 1893 by former DEFC members and now SpVgg Dresden-Löbtau 1893) founded the Dresdner Sport-Club.

Dresdner SC

Dresdner FC was founded on 30 April 1898, and the club was also a founding member of the German Football Association (Deutscher Fussball Bund or German Football Association) in 1900. Early on, Dresdner SC made regular appearances in regional finals and captured several titles. They were a dominant side in the Mitteldeutschen Verbandsliga: from 1925 to 1930 they lost only two of the ninety games they played.

The 30's and 40's

Dresdner's performance slipped for a time, but the club re-emerged as a strong side in the Gauliga Sachsen, one of sixteen top flight divisions established in the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich. They captured the Tschammerpokal – the predecessor of today's German Cup in 1940 and 1941, and followed up with national titles in 1943 and 1944. The club won all 23 games they played during the 1942/43 season, scoring 152 goals and conceding only 16. Their 4:0 win over Luftwaffen SV Hamburg in Berlin's Olympiastadion made them the last holders of the Viktoria trophy, symbolic of German football supremacy since it was first awarded to VfB Leipzig in 1903. That trophy was secreted by a Dresden supporter to a bank safe deposit box in what would become East Germany and remained hidden away for decades before finally being returned to the German Football Association.

Post World War II - Denazification, 1950 East German championship final riot, and dissolution

After World War II, all existing sports clubs and other organizations were banned by the Allied occupation authorities in an attempt to create a disconnect from the recent Nazi past. In early 1946, the club was re-constituted as SG Friedrichstadt and then slipped into oblivion after a fateful appearance in the 1950 East German championship final. That match, against Soviet-sponsored Horch Zwickau, would be the end of the side which was regarded as being too bourgeoisie by the communist authorities. Zwickau played a viciously physical game and, abetted by the referee who refused the homeside substitutions and eventually reduced Friedrichstadt to an 8-man squad, "won" the match 5:1. Unhappy Dresdner/Friedrichstadt fans invaded the field several times, and at game's end, badly beat a Zwickau player. Mounted police were called in to restore order. Within weeks, orders came to dismantle the club and send the players to BSG Tabak Dresden. Most of the players instead fled to the west to play for Hertha BSC Berlin.

SG Dynamo Dresden - as it is known today

Early years

After a riot at the final of the 1950 East German championship, SG Friedrichstadt was dissolved. The city needed a new, ideologically safe representative, and a new football club as founded, as part of SG Deutsche Volkspolizei Dresden. A team was assembled with players delegated from 11 other police-affiliated clubs, and quickly established itself as a force in East German football, winning its first cup in 1952. In April 1953, the central sports society SV Dynamo was founded, to which VP Dresden were affiliated, taking the name of SG Dynamo Dresden. Shortly after this the club claimed its first East German title.

This success, though, proved to be the club's undoing. Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, of which Dynamo were now part, was unhappy that Dresden was enjoying footballing success, while the capital, East Berlin, lacked a strong footballing team. In 1954, Dynamo's team were moved to Berlin, to form Dynamo Berlin. Among the players lost to Berlin were Dynamo's first internationals, including Johannes Matzen, Herbert Schoen and Günter Schröter, while the remainder of the club was left to regroup in the second-tier DDR-Liga.

Re-emergence

Dynamo Dresden were left with a team composed of youth and reserve players, and by 1957 had dropped to the fourth tier, playing in the local Bezirksliga. They began to climb the leagues, though, and by 1962 they were back in the DDR-Oberliga, and although this first season ended in relegation, they bounced back immediately. They recovered equally well from another relegation in 1968, and remained in the Oberliga from 1969 until its dissolution in 1991. This relegation came after a fourth place finish in 1967, which enabled Dynamo's first foray into European football – they entered the 1967–68 Fairs Cup, where they were eliminated by Scottish side Rangers in the first round.

During the 1965–66 season, 11 East German clubs were separated from their parent sports clubs to be designated as Fußballclubs: clubs focused entirely on football, where the country's best talent would be transferred with the object of developing players for the national team. Dynamo Dresden were one of these, although they retained the title of Sportgemeinschaft (SG).

Glory years - 5 league titles

During the 1970s, Dynamo established themselves as one of the top teams in East Germany, under the management of Walter Fritzsch. They won five league titles (1971, 1973, 1976, 1977 and 1978), and two cups, (1971 and 1977). They battled with 1. FC Magdeburg for domination of the league, and became the most popular the side in the country, regularly drawing crowds of 25,000, around three times what other clubs were attracting. They also began to establish themselves as a presence in European football – they played in European competition every year during the 1970s, and eliminated some big names – beating FC Porto, Juventus and Benfica on their way to four quarter-final finishes. During this time Dynamo came up against West German opposition for the first time, losing against Bayern Munich 7–6 on aggregate in the last 16 of the 1973–74 European Cup. On three occasions they were eliminated by English side Liverpool, twice in the UEFA Cup and once in the European Cup, and each time Liverpool went on to win the competition. In 1973, Hans-Jürgen Kreische was the first Dynamo Dresden player to be named East German Footballer of the Year, and was followed by Hans-Jürgen Dörner in 1977. Kreische was the league's leading goalscorer on four occasions, and was named in East Germany's squad for the 1974 World Cup, along with team-mate Siegmar Wätzlich.

History was to repeat itself, though, at the end of the 1970s. Erich Mielke, again jealous that provincial clubs were dominating the league while his beloved Dynamo Berlin were starved of success, began to manipulate the league in favour of the side from the capital.

Capital dominance - Erich Mielke strikes again

East German football had generally been set up in favour of the "Fußballclubs", who were usually delegated the best players, but the authorities had usually kept out of on-pitch matters. This changed in the late-1970s and 80s though, as players and referees were coerced by the Stasi into helping the cause of Berliner FC Dynamo. BFC won ten consecutive titles, from 1979 to 1988. Of all clubs, Dynamo Dresden were the most affected by this, finishing second on six occasions, although they did win the FDGB-Pokal three times (1982 and 1984, 1985). Towards the end of the 1980s, the Stasi's influence was waning, and Dynamo Dresden reclaimed the title in 1989, and retained it in 1990, adding a cup win to complete a double.

By this point the Berlin Wall had fallen, and many of the top players in East Germany took the opportunity to head west. In the summer of 1990, Dynamo Dresden lost two star players, Ulf Kirsten and Matthias Sammer joining VfB Stuttgart and Bayer Leverkusen respectively. With German reunification looming, many clubs in the East changed their name to shed their Soviet image, and Dynamo Dresden changed from SG to the more traditional 1. FC. The Oberliga also changed name for its final season: the league, now called the NOFV-Oberliga, was used to determine which places the East German clubs would take in the unified German league. Dynamo Dresden finished 2nd, behind Hansa Rostock, thus qualifying for the Bundesliga.

The Wall had fallen - Germany reunited

Having been among the top clubs in the East, Dynamo found life in the Bundesliga much harder, struggling both financially and on the pitch. Club spent 4 years in the top tier, during which they were in a near-constant battle against relegation. The inevitable happened in 1994-95 season, club having gone through three managers (Siegfried Held, Horst Hrubesch and Ralf Minge) during the season, and finished last that season. To add to this, the club had accumulated debts of more than 10 million DM, and were denied a license to play in the 2. Bundesliga, and had to drop down to the third tier Regionalliga Nordost. Rolf-Jürgen Otto, the club's president was jailed for having embezzled around 3 Million DM from the club.

While many of the stars of the 1980s had moved west, some remained for Dynamo's Bundesliga tenure, including Torsten Gütschow and Hans-Uwe Pilz, while the club was able to attract players from other Eastern clubs, including Olaf Marschall, René Müller and Heiko Scholz. The fall of the wall brought the influx of Dynamo's first foreign players, and the club saw internationals from Australia (Mark Schwarzer), Poland (Piotr Nowak), Russia (Stanislav Cherchesov) and Sweden (Johnny Ekström), among others.

Between 1995 and 2006, club have drifted between the second and fourth tier. Finally, in the 2010-11 season, after securing 3rd place in 3. Liga, Dynamo qualified for a playoff against VfL Osnabrück which Dynamo won 4–2 on aggregate to earn promotion to the 2. Bundesliga, where they have been playing since.

Records

Stadium

Dynamo play at the Glücksgas Stadium, which was opened in 1923, originally named the Rudolf-Harbig-Stadion after local track and field athlete Rudolf Harbig. The stadium was renamed Dynamo-Stadion by the East German authorities in 1971, but reverted to its former name after reunification. With an original capacity of 24,000, the stadium was rebuilt in the 1990s, in line with DFB and FIFA regulations, and was thoroughly modernised between 2006 and 2009. The rebuilt stadium opened on 15 September 2009 with a friendly match against Schalke 04. In 2010, the stadium was renamed in line with its new sponsor, Glücksgas.

Supporters

Dynamo were one of East Germany's best-supported clubs, regularly drawing crowds of around 25,000 during their heyday. Since reunification attendance levels have fluctuated along with the team's fortunes, but following their 2010 advance to the 2. Bundesliga, they are currently drawing an average of 25,000. The 2012-13 season average attendance reached 24,964.

Honours