Slowly climbing to the real stuff – but there was one more division: the best 6 clubs were really two separate groups, if not three. Chemie (Halle) was 6th with 30 points. The 7th had 24 points, but Chemie was not a favourite either.
A team without stars, Chemie was sturdy, experienced, and well rounded at best. Quite enough to propel them into the top group, but not making them really able to truly compete. Their final position tells about real strength – Chemie was only better than most in the league.
Carl Zeiss (Jena), with 31 points was 5th. Their position is a bit misguiding: one of the traditionally strongest clubs in DDR was among the best as ever. To be 5th was not surprising really, for normally it was a shuffle between familiar names. But this season Carl Zeiss was entirely out of the championship race, despite their final place. But it did not look like a beginning of decline either – the team was strong and Carl Zeiss had good European performance. It was just a temporary slippage, no matter how strange it appeared to see Carl Zeiss not as a contender.
This season Carl Zeiss introduced their new kit design – hoops were almost unseen in East German football. Traditionally, the designs were different and the jerseys of the technical stuff represent the typical ones. Even stripes were relatively rare, but hoops were radical departure. Carl Zeiss was to use this design for about 5 years and during that time hoops became popular with other clubs.
Lokomotive (Leipzig) was 4th with 32 points, rounding the mini-division of the strongest. Normal place for them. Perhaps they got a bit fewer points than usual, but Lokomotive was peculiar club: one of the consistently strong clubs, yet, never a contender.
The squad gives the reason why Lokomotive were not potential champions- they always had a group of very players, but never as many as the other favourites. The limited pool of East German talent did not permit them any better.
Third was the only really rising club in the recent years – Dynamo (Berlin).
The Stasi club was getting stronger, unlike the Army club Vorwaerts. The key players were – Terletzki, Lauck, Trieloff, Riediger, Rudwaleit – already with plenty of experience and the number of stars was slowly increasing. But the squad still needed some additions, fine tuning, maturity. Their hour was coming, but did not come yet. 35 points this year – clearly better than the three clubs bellow them, but also not in the championship race – Dynamo was separated by three points from that.
At the end, it was a race between two very familiar opponents: 1. FC Magdeburg and SG Dynamo (Dresden). Magdeburg outpaced the rest of the league, but was no match for Dynamo – they had the best defensive record in the league (-17), but as usually happens, it was at the expense of their attack (fifth in the league – all clubs of the top tier, save Chemie, scored more goals. Magdeburg ended 3 points behind the champions.
The squad was still full of players vividly remembering the day they won the Cup Winners Cup – Sparwasser, Zapf, Hoffmann, Pommerenke, Tyll, Seguin, Raugust. Joachim Streich, the best East German left winger of the 1970s, joined them recently. Magdeburg were running strong, but there was only one title… 38 points were not enough for winning it.
41 points were. Dynamo (Dresden) lost 3 matches, tied 5, and won 18. They scored 70 goals – 13 more than second best attack (Lokomotive Leipzig). They won confidently their 6th title and third consecutive.
Dynamo were the most successful East German club during the 1970s, no doubt about it. Top row, from left: Gert Heidler, Reinhard Hafner, Frank Richter, Hans-Jurgen Dorner, Matthias Muller, Klaus Muller, Dieter Riedel, Rainer Sachse.
Middle row: Gerhard Prautzsch – coach, Karsten Petersohn, Udo Schmuck, Gerd Weber, Hartmut Schade, Andreas Trautmann, Matthias Doschner.
Front row: Peter Kotte, Jorg Klimpel, Claus Boden, Bernd Jakubowski, Christian Helm.
The team had enough class, but something was already visible: Dynamo, Magdeburg, and Carl Zeiss largely depended on the great players of the 1970s, arguably the best East German generation, still quite young and influential. But no new stars emerged to challenge the established ones. Potential trouble – but still far away.