By now everything was well known in advance in East German football – to the point of wondering why they bothered to conduct a championship. The champions and the relegated were no secret before the start of the first game of the season.
BSG Chemie Buna (Schkopau) – last with 11 points. Promoted the previous season, going down immediately.
BSG Energie (Cottbus) – also promoted the season before, also earning 11 points, also going down immediately. Standing from left: Andreas Göhlich (Co-Trainer), Robert Reiß, Thomas Teichmann, Bernd Müller, Dieter Paulo, Bernd Kulke, Michael Braun, Uwe Weller, Ralf Lempke, Dieter Schulz (Cheftrainer).
Sitting: René Röder, Bernd Deutschmann, Rolf-Dieter Kahnt, Andreas Wendt, Bernd Mudra, Hagen Wellschmidt.
Front row: Karl-Heinz Jahn, Roland Balck, Dietmar Drabow, Klaus Pohle, Petrik Sander.
BSG Sachsenring (Zwickau) – 12th with 14 points. The last of the hopeless outsiders, but safe at the end.
HFC Chemie (Halle) – 11th with 23 points. Not a worry in the world.
BSG Wismut (Aue) – ahead of Chemie (Halle) only on better goal-difference.
FC Karl-Marx-Stadt (Karl-Marx-Stadt) – 9th with 24 points.
FC Hansa (Rostock) – 8th with 25 points.
FC Rot-Weiss (Erfurt) – 7th with 28 points. All this clubs had been pretty much at the same places for years.
1. FC Magdeburg – 6th with 32 points. The usual divide shown by points: the same strongest teams were always far better than the lower half of the league. As for Magdeburg… they seemingly depended largely on the remains of their great team from the first half of the 1970s: Streich, Hoffmann, Pommerenke, Tyll.
FC Carl Zeiss (Jena) – 5th with 32 points. Third row from left: Helmut Stein(Trainer) – Dietmar Sengewald – Gerhard Hoppe – Hans-Ulrich Grapenthin – Hans-Joachim Meyer(Trainer) – Karsten Härtel – Andreas Bielau – Jürgen Raab – Dr. Johannes Roth
Middle row: Matthias Dressel(Physiotherapeut) – Rüdiger Schnuphase – Ulrich Oevermann – Lutz Lindemann – Lothar Kurbjuweit – Stefan Meixner – Konrad Weise – Eberhard Vogel – Peter Rock(Mannschaftsleiter)
Front row: Martin Trocha – Fred Steinborn – Matthias Kaiser – Thomas Töpfer – Andreas Krause – Wolfgang Schilling – Gert Brauer.
FC Vorwaerts (Frankfurt/Oder) – 4th with 33 points. Their coming-back was seemingly completed – among the best, not a title contender. But who was anyway?
1. FC Lokomotive (Leipzig) – better goal-difference clinched them bronze medals. Nice. Also typical.
SG Dynamo (Dresden) – silver medalists with 34 points. Barely the best team of those who would not win.
BFC Dynamo (East Berlin) – champions for 4th consecutive year. 41 points – 7 more than Dynamo (Dresden) summarizes all. 74 goals scored – almost twenty more than second highest scorers, Vorwaerts. Only Dynamo (Dresden) had better defensive record than the champions. Well, they had the best team in the country by far and when feet were not enough there was back-room intimidation and fixing. Painfully familiar by now.