Borussia Dortmund was born when young players locked a priest out of a pub
In December 1909, young footballers fed up with their church youth group met in a Dortmund pub to start their own club, and blocked the door when the parish priest came to stop them. That rebellion became Borussia Dortmund, European champions in 1997 and backed by about 218,000 members.
The founders had played under Trinity Youth, a Catholic parish organisation, until they broke away on 19 December 1909 at the pub Zum Wildschütz, where Father Dewald was physically kept out of the meeting. Early decades brought little glory. A 1929 attempt to buy success with paid players nearly bankrupted the club, which survived only because a supporter covered the debts personally. Under the Nazi regime the club president was removed for refusing to join the party, and members who secretly printed anti-Nazi leaflets in the club offices were executed in the war's final days.
Success arrived after the war. Borussia won national titles in 1956 and 1957, and when German football's governing body met in Dortmund in 1962 and voted to create the Bundesliga, the club secured a founding place by winning the last championship before it. Its striker Friedhelm Konietzka scored the league's first ever goal a minute into the opening match. In 1966 Dortmund beat Liverpool in extra time to lift the European Cup Winners' Cup, a first European trophy for a German club.
Harder times followed, with money trouble, relegation in 1972 and a narrow escape in a 1986 playoff, though the Westfalenstadion opened in 1974. Prize money from reaching the 1993 UEFA Cup final, lost heavily to Juventus, paid for the players who made the 1990s golden. Captained by Matthias Sammer, Dortmund won the league in 1995 and 1996, then beat Juventus in the 1997 Champions League final in Munich, where Karl-Heinz Riedle scored twice and the 20-year-old local substitute Lars Ricken added another. They then beat Cruzeiro to become world club champions.
In October 2000 Borussia became the first German club listed on the stock market, and Sammer became the first person to win the league with the club as player and coach in 2002. The Ruhr rivalry with Schalke 04 still defines the calendar, and the club has built a reputation for developing young talent.
Source: Borussia Dortmund
