The first season of the new 2. Bundesliga. 20 teams. The last 4 relegated, the top 2 promoted directly. The 3rd was going to a promotion/relegation play-off against the 16th in the 1. Bundesliga. No real newcomers – most league members were well established second division clubs for years. 9 were former top division members, at least one quite a famous club with long successful history. The former first division members were expected to compete for the top spots – and they did.
SpVgg Bayreuth finished 20th – last. Hardly a surprise. 22 points.
Freiburger FC was 19th with 23 points. Freiburg lost its derby – and with this relegation 2. Bundesliga was left without any local derby.
Wormatia (Worms) ended 18th with 24 points – and went down. Those three were really the outsiders this season – way bellow the rest of the league.
SG Wattenscheid 09 was 17th, the 4th team in the relegation zone. Unlike those bellow, the team fought and came just short a bit, finishing with 31 points – 2 less than the 16th placed. Down… but the boys were in luck, for another club got its license revoked by DFB and thus relegated. This saved SG Wattenscheid 09.
Union Solingen – 16th with 33 points. May be a lucky break, for Union was one of the candidates for relegation.
SC Freiburg – 15th with 34 points. Nothing remarkable, but better than their city rivals – at least, they were staying in the league. This may be a photo of either the previous or the next season, for it features one Joachim Low, who played first division football in 1981-82. Well, nobody was interested of such anonymous player back then and the name meant absolutely nothing. Today – everybody knows the name.
Bayer Uerdingen – 12th with 39 points.
Rot-Weiss Essen – 11th with 38 points, but better goal-difference than Bayer Uerdingen. The long painful decline settled. As it turned, there was no stop to that.
Fortuna (Koln) – the typical second-division club. 10th with 39 points this season. Mid-table position – neither bad, nor good – just firmly established in the second level.
Alemannia (Aachen) – the same as Fortuna (Koln). 9th with 41 points.
Hessen Kassel – 8th with 43 points. So far, a club of the same ilk as Fortuna and Alemannia.
Stuttgarter Kickers – a place above Hessen thanks to better goal-difference. 43 points and 7th in the final table, one more quintessential second-division club. 21-years old Guido Buchwald in his third season – not famous yet, only promising youngster.
SV Waldhof Mannheim – 6th with 44 points. One more best suited for second-division football club.
Hannover 96 – one of the unsettled clubs, constantly moving up and down. 5th with 45 points this year. The squad clearly shows why they had difficulties surviving in Bundesliga – simply, not good enough.
TSV 1860 Munchen – at last a team with some bite: Zander, Klinkhammer, Sidka, Wohlers. Add the 22-years old Rudi Voller, playing second division football for the last time. The team missed promotion – finished 4th with 45 points, but… was relegated. The reason was financial – DFB revoked their license at the end of the season and they went down automatically. Too bad… or may be too good, for may be that was the prime reason Voller to move to another club and to glory.
Kickers Offenbach – 3rd with 46 points. Increadibly bad goal-diference for a high-placed team: +3 – 70-67. Going to the promotion-relegation play-off in one, almost last, attempt to return to top division. Alas, the good years – the early 70s – were gone… Kickers lost both matches against Bayer Leverkusen – 0-1 and 1-2.
Hertha West Berlin – 2nd with 48 points and the best goal-difference in the league: +37. Second highest scorers after TSV 1860 Munchen – 84 goals. Hertha was among the likely winners of promotion before the start of the season and their ambitions were rewarded with strong play. But this was not a squad equal to most in the Bundesliga and the struggles the club was going through in the last few years were likely to continue.
And the champions – Schalke 04. Not at its best, certainly. And trying to rebuild along veterans like Nigbur and Janzon. For the moment – fine. 19 wins, 13 ties, only 6 losses, 70-35 goal-difference, 51 points. Champions of second division does not count much for a club like Schalke 04, but it was return to top flight and may be next year would be better.
So, in the first season of the new amalgamated second division Schalke 04 and Hertha won direct promotion and Kickers lost the promotion/relegation play-off. First observation of the new format? The old one had problems and now they were the same: not enough class, not really producing teams able to challenge former first division members. The top 6 in the league were former members of the Bundesliga and the most famous ones ended at the very top. Even if they had no great or even promising squads.