Bundesliga remains one of the strongest club football championships in Europe. This can be confirmed by the constantly growing number of fans and the number of views of football todays games on TV and online.
Though, before the Bundesliga became so popular, football in Germany was purely amateur and football leagues were subregional :
- It all started in Leipzig when the national association Deutscher Fussball-Bund (DFB) was founded on January 28, 1900.
- At that time, it consisted of 86 club-members. VfB Leipzig was the first team, which was created in Germany.
- DFB has also allowed foreign clubs to participate in their competitions, provided that they are members of one of the regional associations.
Thus, even the Praga team from Austria-Hungary finished second in the country. Everything changed in 1904 when this federation became a member of FIFA.
Kronprinzenpokal Cup games were arranged in 1908. The trophy was presented to the winner of these games by Prince Wilhelm of Prussia. Prior to this, the Victoria tournament was successfully held. The last winner of Victoria in 1944 was Dresden, which defeated the Luftwaffe Hamburg 4-0 at the Berlin Olympic Stadium.
At the end of World War II, this trophy mysteriously disappeared. Several decades later, it was revealed that fans from Dresden hid Victoria in a safe in an East German bank, because they wanted to leave it there.
This trophy was found and returned to the DFB. Though, 5 years later it disappeared, and was replaced by a new one - Meisterschale, today's football games sometimes called die Salatschüssel, or "salad bowl".
The state of Bundesliga : from 1950s to nowadays Games resumed in Oberliga in 1946. In 1948, Nuremberg FC defeated Kaiserslautern FC 2-1 and became the first post-war German football champion.
Today Bundesliga results shows that Bundesliga remains one of the top football club championships in the Old World, along with English Premier League, La Liga and others.
But what about the 1950s? In the 1950s, there were many calls for creating a single big national league. The Bundesliga was finally founded in Dortmund, Westfalenhallen on July 28, 1962. Its first season took place in 1963/64.
The concept of creating a national competition was to be similar to that practiced in England since 1888. FC Bayern Munich, which ultimately dominated the entire national football championship, won the first German football championship during the Bundesliga in 1968/69.
In the late 80s, the Bundesliga signed its first major TV broadcasting contract. Thanks to this, football in this country has become more popular than before. Today results of the Bundesliga are taken into account on all websites of football statistics and are actively used by betters for predicting the results of football matches.