Month: July 2024

The German Cup final opposed Werder to Kaiserslautern. Given their performance in the league, coaches and players, Werder had more than an edge. But on the field names and previous performances meant nothing and the underdog prevailed 3-2.
Werder (Bremen) lost the final and if somebody had to be blamed, then Rehhagel, Bode, Eilts, Wolter, Borowka, Bratseth, Freund, Votava, Burgsmuller, Riedle, Reck, had to blame only themselves.
1. FC Kaiserslautern – Cup winners for the first time! Standing from left: Karlheinz Feldkamp – coach, Marcus Schupp, Roger Lutz, Bruno Labbadia, Frank Lelle, Franco Foda, Grzegorz Wiezik, Kay Friedmann, Reinhard Stumpf. Crouching: Herbert Hoos, Axel Roos, Uwe Scherr, Michael Serr, Stefan Kuntz, Gerald Ehrmann, Demir Hotic, Thomas Dooley.
A rather modest squad… even the imports hardly rung any bell: Demir Hotic was not called to play for Yugoslavia for quite some time, Thomas Dooley was… American and Americans were hardly known, even their best. A triumph of the underdog for sure and that is always pleasing, although nobody expects future success of an underdog. But for 1. FC Kaiserslautern it was different – it was historic success: not only their first Cup, but first trophy since very distant 1953, when they won the West German title. And this seemingly accidental success was just a foundation on which to build – the right coach was already there, some good players, even if not first-rate stars, and with some right additions… but that was for the future.

First Division – Bundesliga. Compared to Italy and Spain, the German clubs imported foreign players of lower rank and at the moment, largely East Europeans and practically no South Americans. Clubs went up and down, Bayern stayed constantly on top. In a nutshell, that was all.
FC 08 Homburg – last with 24 points and relegated.
Waldhof (Mannheim) – 17th with 26 points and relegated.
VfL Bochum – 16th with 29 points and going to promotion/relegation play-off. Masters of survival, Bochum – they extracted 1-0 victory away against the 3rd in the Second Division, 1. FC Saarbrucken, and then kept 1-1 draw at home. Enough to stay in the Bundesliga.
Borussia (Moenchengladbach) barely survived – 15th with 30 points.
Bayer 05 (Uerdingen) – 14th with 30 points. Ahead of Borussia (M) on better goal-difference.
FC St. Pauli (Hamburg) – 13th with 31 points.
1. FC Kaiserslautern – 12th with 31 points. Nothing much in the league, but this happened to be the most successful season for the club since 1953.
Hamburger SV – 11th with 31 points.
Karlsruher SC – 10th with 32 points.
Fortuna (Dusseldorf) – 9th with 32 points.
1. FC Nurnberg – 8th with 33 points.
SV Werder (Bremen) – 7th with 34 points.

VfB Stuttgart – 6th with 36 points.
Bayer 04 (Leverkusen) – 5th with 39 points.
Borussia (Dortmund) – 4th with 41 points.
Eintracht (Frankfurt) – 3rd with 41 points. Ahead of Borussia (D) on better goal-difference.

1. FC Koln – 2nd with 43 points. Strong season, but not strong enough to challenge sufficiently Bayern.
And one more triumphal season for Bayern – sole leaders, no matter what. 19 wins, 11 ties, only 4 lost games, 64-28, and 49 points. Way above the rest, excellent coaching by once-upon-a-time rival Jupp Heynckes and – routinely – the strongest squad in the league, with one weak position – the goalkeeper. That is, comparatively weak post, but this situation would be remedied soon. Perhaps this squad was not great when compared to some earlier vintages, but currently the other German teams were not so great either and Bayern was head and shoulders above them and only the present really counts.
And in the present Bayern won its 12th title and proudly photographed the squad in retro-kit, no doubt a bit of fancy advertisement of their current sponsor, which did not pay the club just to win trophies, but also to promote and sell cars.

Of course, the cars were not the 1899 model, but the modest current Kadett, which probably no Bayern player owned. So… perhaps Opel was the real champion of West Germany this season.

Second Division – 2. Bundesliga. 20 teams, the last 4 relegated to the regional leagues, the top 2 promoted to the Bundesliga and the 3rd going to promotion/relegation play-off against the 16th in the top league.
SpVgg Unterhaching ended last with 29 points and relegated.
Alemannia (Aachen) – 19th with 30 points and relegated.
SpVgg Bayreuth – 18th with 31 points and relegated.
Hessen (Kassel) – 17th with 33 points, but worse goal-difference than SV Darmstadt 98 and VfL Osnabruck relegated them.
SV Darmstadt 98 – lucky, thanks to better goal-difference: 16th with 33 points.
VfL Osnabruck – 15th with 33 points, having best goal-difference among the 3 teams with same points.
Fortuna (Koln) – 14th with 34 points. Having perhaps the most famous player in the Second Division – Tony Woodcock, who at his prime played for 1.FC Koln and England. Now… fighting to escape relegation.
SC Freiburg – 13th with 34 points.
SC Preussen (Munster) – 12th with 36 points.
SV Meppen – 11th with 36 points.
MSV Duisburg – 10th with 37 points. Top row from left: Woelk, Vtic, J. Kessen, Decker, Thiele, Kober, Lienen, Azzouzi, Janssen
Middle row: Co-Trainer Merheim, Telljohann, Notthoff, Tönnies, Puszamszies, Struckmann, Steininger, Callea, Semlits, Trainer Kremer
Front row: Zeugwart Ricken, Voßnacke, Kellermann, Macherey, Rusche, Mariotti, Zils, Schmidt, Masseur Hinkelmann
Blau-Weiss 90 (starting as a team from West Berlin, ending the season as a team from one unified Berlin) – 9th with 37 points.
Hannover 96 – of Hannoverscher SV 96 – 8th with 38 points. The well-known Yugoslav coach Cendic, however, is a wrong face here: his work with Hannover was very brief – only in the summer and the very start of the championship.
Eintracht (Braunschweig) – 7th with 39 points.
Rot-Weiss (Essen) – 6th with 42 points.
FC Schalke 04 – 5th with 43 points.
Stuttgarter Kickers – 4th with 45 points.
1. FC Saarbrucken – 3rd with 46 points. Went to the promotion/relegation play-off and lost to VfL Bochum 0-1 and 1-1. Thus, they stayed in Second Division.
SG Wattenscheid 09 – 2nd with 51 points and promoted to the Bundesliga.
Hertha BSC (By mid-season the Berlin wall was down and they were no longer representing West Berlin, but the whole city – just Berlin) – champions this season with 53 points. 22 wins, 9 ties, 7 losses and 65-39 goal-difference. Not overwhelming champions, but the prime goal was achieved: return to the Bundesliga. That perhaps counted more than Second Division title, but it did not hurt at all to be champions.

West Germany. When the season started there were still two states, BRD and DDR, then in mid-season unification happened and at the end of the season Germany was one – but not in football yet, so the old championships remained, there was still DDR national team playing and the next season was still going to be separate somewhat. Players, however, moved freely from East German to West German clubs, not in flocks, but whoever was highly talented moved West. So, the West German system remained intact at the end of this season, including league movements for the next season.
A glimpse at the West German lower levels, the regional ones – only a pictorial fragment. Little known clubs, most of them, but also some recognizable names.
SpVgg 07 Ludwigsburg
FV Offenburg
VfB Bad Rappena
Blumenthaler
FSV Frankfurt
SV Sandhausen
Wormatia (Worms). Top row from left: Masseur Panosiadis Choudalakes, Markus Braden, Manuel Padilla, Milos Ljusic, Heinz-Jürgen Schlösser, Stefan Steinmetz, Jürgen Klotz.
Middle row: Liga-Obmann Jürgen Krafczyck, Zeugwart Günter Reinhardt, Rainer Heilmann, Bernd Eck, Günter Braun, Jürgen Goschler, Co-Trainer Peter Klag, Trainer Dr. Stefan Lottermann, Geschäftsführender Vorsitzender Manfred Brassen.
Sitting: Slavko Klappan, Stefan Glaser, Frank Schuster, Armin Reichel, Günter Knecht, Marc Bals, Frank Spölgen, Marc Schall, Präsident Helmut Rödler.
Kickers (Offenbach)
TSV 1860 (Munich). Top row from left: Ralph Müller-Gesser, Markus Wolf, Martin Spanring, Jürgen Wolke, Norbert Rolshausen, Horst Schmidbauer, Reiner Maurer.
Middle row: Trainer Willi Bierofka, Co-Trainer Zittl, Roland Kneißl, Stephan Beckenbauer, Bernhard Meisl, Walter Hainer, Srdjan Colakovic, Masseure Hodrius und Lebmeier.
Front: Stephan Windsperger, Reinhold Breu, Andreas Wächter, Markus Lach, Bobby Dekeyser, Andreas Geyer, Albert Gröber, Armin Störzenhofecker.
Of course, the regional champions are important here – 9 of them, 5 in the North and 4 in the South, which played final promotion tournaments and the top 2 in them got promoted to the Second Division.
The Northern champions were:
Oberliga Nordrhein: Wupertaller SV; Oberliga Westfalen: Arminia (Bielefeld); Oberliga Berlin: Reinickerndirfer Füchse; Oberliga Nord (1st): VfB Oldenburg; Oberliga Nord (2nd): TSV Havelse.
The Southern champions:
Oberliga Bayern: 1.FC Schweinfurt 05; Oberliga Hessen:
Rot-Weiss (Frankfurt),
Oberliga Baden-Wurttemberg: SSV Reutlingen; Oberliga Sudwest: FSV Mainz 05.
In the South promotion earned:
FSV Mainz 05 and
1. FC Schweinfurt 05.
In the North, Arminia (Bielefeld) failed to win promotion. The promoted teams were:
TSC Havelse and
VfB Oldenburg.
Good luck to the newly promoted in the Second Division next season.

The Soviet Cup was also a sign of future – Dinamo (Kiev) vs Lokomotiv (Moscow). The top team in the country vs the 4th in the Second Division. The great Valery Lobanovsky, with all his fame against Yury Semin, the new breed of young coaches. The past vs the future, in a sense, although at the time nobody saw it like that and what happened on the field did not suggest a change: Dinamo destroyed Lokomotiv 6-1, entirely predicted victory.
Lokomotiv (Moscow) was not ready yet for something big. Yes, there was progress and they were promising team and coach, but still in the making – as not only the lost Cup final, but also their 4th place in the Second Division showed. Still, it was interesting and and refreshing to see traditionally modest club playing Second Division football to play at the Cup final – such thing happened very rarely in USSR and actually only once a Second Division team won the Cup. Well, no second surprise.
Well, the Cup was the first trophy of the season won by Dinamo and at the end they finished with a double. Apart from that, the winning squad shows how rapidly changed Soviet teams at this time – it is quite different squad than the one at the end of 1990. Crouching from left: P. Shvydky – masseur, V. Evlantiev – masseur, S. Kovaletz, A. Mikhailichenko, V. Ratz, S. Shmatovalenko, O. Protassov, A. Chubarov – administrator, B. Derkach. To row: A. Puzach – assistant coach, O. Matovetzky – administrator, V. Malyuta – doctor, O. Kuznetzov, O. Luzhny, V. Chanov, V. Lobanovsky – coach, A. Tzveiba, O. Salenko, V. Veremeev – team chief, A. Demyanenko, A. Bal, G. Litovchenko, M. Mikhailov, S.Zaetz.
Because of the changes, one more photo of the double winners, which is perhaps more in tune with the main heroes of the season.

Premier League or First Division. Scheduled for 16 teams, started with 14, actually played and finished with 13. Because of this, relegation was readjusted: no team was directly going down, the last in the table was going to promotion/relegation playoff against the 4th in the Second Division. Under the circumstances at that time, looked like that Dinamo (Kiev) would have no rival, but it was not exactly like expected – new force came up from behind. In view of future disintegration of USSR and changes in the make of the league let see to which republics belonged the current members: Russia had 5 teams, Ukraine – also 5, Armenia, Belarus, and Tadjikistan had 1 teams each – in time, 8 teams of this league will be out.
Rotor (Volgograd, Russia) finished last and in the last minute too with 14 points. They still had a chance to remain in the top league, but eventually lost the playoff against Lokomotiv (Moscow) and were relegated.

Dinamo (Minsk, Belarus) barely escaped relegation – 12th with 15 points. Not a trace of the team which won the Soviet title less than a decade ago. Top row from left: Aleksandr Chernukho – masseur, Pavel Rodnenok, Fedor Sikorsky, Sergey Shiroky, Erik Yakhimovich, Yury Vergeychik, Sergey Pavlyuchuk, Sergey Gomonov, Sergey Gotzmanov. Middle row: Vassily Dmitrakov – doctor, Aleksandr Taykov, Alli Alchagirov, Evgeny Kashentzev, Evgeny Kuznetzov – assistant coach, Mikhail Tzeytin – assistant coach, Ivan Shtchekin – assistant coach, Leonid Garay – team chief, Eduard Malofeev – coach, Mikhail Vergeenko – assistant coach, Mikhail Markhel, Andrey Shalimo, Andrey Zygmantovich, Aleksandr Gorbylev – assistant coach, Leonid Vassilevsky – administrator. Front row: Yury Kurbyko, Yury Antonovich, Vladimir Demidov, Aleksandr Metlitzky, Sergey Gerassimetz, Sergey Rassikin, Viktor Sokol, Igor Gurinovich, Genady Lessun, Andrey Satzunkevich.
Metallist (Kharkov, Ukraine) – 11th with 18 points. Sitting from left: A. Kanishtev, V. Suslo, R. Kolokolov, V. Simakovich, I. Kutepov, V. Dudka, V. Yalovsky, I. Panchishin, S. Ralyuchenko. Middle row: A. Zhitnik, M. Shamrilo, V. Udovenko, L. Tkachenko, A. Dovby, V. Plekhov, S. Ozeryan. Top row: D. Khomukha, O. Derevinsky, A. Ivanov, A. Baranov, V. Aristov, I. Yakubovsky, A. Essipov, V. Shtcherbak, Yu. Tarassov.
Pamir (Dushanbe, Tadjikistan) – the debutantes did fairly well: 10th with 18 points.
Chernomoretz (Odessa, Ukraine) – 9th with 19 points.
Shakhter (Donetzk, Ukraine) – 8th with 22 points. Bottom row from left: S. Yashchenko, I. Petrov, V. Grachev, V. Zeyberlinsh, V. Goshkoderya. Middle row: A. Sopko, V. Elinskas, E. Dragunov, V. Onopko. Top row: I. Leonov, A. Kanchelskis, V. Mazur, I. Stolovitzky, A. Kobozev.
Ararat (Erevan, Armenia) – 7th with 23 points.
Dnepr (Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine) – 6th with 28 points.
Spartak (Moscow, Russia) – 5th with 29 points. Standing from left: A. Hadzhi, V. Derbupov, O. Imrekov, S. Cherchessov, A. Ivanov, O. Ivanov, S. Bazulev, V. Kulkov, B. Pozdnyakov, G. Belenkon. Crouching: V. Shmarov, A. Mostovoy, I. Shalimov, V. Karpin, D. Gradilenko, D. Popov.
Torpedo (Moscow, Russia) – 4th with 30 points.
Dinamo (Moscow) – 3rd with 31 points. A very suspect photo and most likely wrongly dated – certainly Valery Gazzaev did not coach them this season, but Second Division champions Spartak (Vladikavkaz).
CSKA (Moscow, Russia) – 2nd with 31 points. The pleasant surprise of the season – CSKA was in big decline for a very long time, spending time in the Second Division during the 1980s and when coming back to the top league, unable to stay there. Now they were just promoted once again from Second Division and suddenly went to the top – and is it happened, were going to remain at the top in the future. Bottom row from left: D. Gradilenko, P. Yanushevsky, M. Eryomin, Yu. Shishkin, P. Massalitin, S. Dmitriev. Middle row: V. Murashko – team chief, I. Possokh – coach-masseur, D. Bystrov, S. Krutov, D. Kuznetzov, P. Sadyrin – coach, S. Fokin, D. Galyamin, D. Kardivar – administrator, A. Kuznetzov – assistant coach, B. Kopeykin – assistant coach. Top row: S. Kolotovkin, O. Malyukov, V. Broshin, I. Korneev, M. Kolesnikov, V. Tatarchuk, V. Shashenok – doctor.
And familiar champion: Dinamo (Kiev). After 14 wins, 6 ties, and 4 losses they had 34 points – 3 points more than CSKA – and once again took the Soviet title to Ukraine. Sitting from left: Ivan Yaremchuk, Anatoly Puzach – head coach, Vassily Ratz, Sergey Yuran, Andrey Annenkov, Vladimir Veremeev – team cheaf, Sergey Kovaletz. Middle row: Pavel Shvydky – masseur, Aleksandr Pikuzo – administrator, Genady Litovchenko, Pavel Yakovenko, Viktor Kolotov – coach, Akhrik Tzveiba, Anatoly Demyanenko, Yury Moroz, Vladimir Malyuta – doctor, Viktor Berkovsky – doctor. Top row: Valery Evlantiev – masseur, Andrey Aleksannenkov, Sergey Shmatovalenko, Viktor Chanov, Oleg Salenko, Aleksandr Zhidkov, Sergey Zaetz, Boris Derkach, Aleksandr Chubanov – administrator.
Well… kind of champion squad. Changes were happening so rapidly and they affected even a ‘grand’ club like Dinamo – this photo represents more 1991 than 1990, most likely taken near the end of the year, when the championship was already mere statistics. Already coach Valery Lobanovsky was gone and so were key players, some actually went away in mid-season when the European market was active. Others were going to leave very soon. True, Dinamo had the best players to sell and thus to get more cash than other Soviet club, which in turn gave them free hand to hire top talent not only from Ukraine, as it mainly was for years, but from the whole USSR – that was assurance they will keep their strength with one caveat: everybody was going abroad at this time and what was left was not exactly top talent. And not everybody was capable of handling the new reality: Boris Derkach, for instance, went to play in Bulgaria, then turned to crime and finally to complete obscurity and self-destruction. But the future was hard to predict and the present was… great. 13th title, a record, but also a dangerous number. Who was able to see that will be the last Soviet title for Dinamo (Kiev)? And who would have tell that this will be the eternal record of Soviet football? The fatal and ominous number 13 remains and could be changed only if USSR is restored.