BVB 09

Lore & Background

Founded in 1909 by eighteen football players from Dortmund, the club is nicknamed Die Schwarzgelben (The Black and Yellow). They hold a long-standing rivalry with Ruhr neighbours Schalke 04, against whom they contest the Revierderby, and also contest Der Klassiker with FC Bayern Munich. Dortmund is the largest sports club by membership in Germany after FC Bayern Munich, with about 218,000 members, making it the fifth largest sports club by membership in the world. The club also has a women's handball team. Since 1974, Dortmund have played their home games at the Westfalenstadion; the stadium is the largest in Germany, the Yellow Wall is the largest standing terrace of its kind in Europe, and Dortmund has the highest average attendance of any association football club in the world.

In Their Own Story

The air inside the Westfalenstadion is thick with humidity and anticipation, a physical weight pressing against the chest of every soul in the South Stand. It is a Tuesday night under the floodlights, the pitch a perfect emerald rectangle waiting for battle. The 'Gelbe Wand' rises as one entity, a sea of yellow scarves and flags that seems to touch the sky. A striker receives the ball on the edge of the box; time slows. He looks up, sees the wall behind his goal, and knows he is not playing alone. The roar swells into a deafening crescendo, a sound so powerful it rattles the teeth of the opposition goalkeeper. In this moment, BVB 09 is not just a team; it is an unstoppable force of nature.

Reader's Guide

Dortmund is the second most decorated German football team; domestically, they have eight league championships, five DFB-Pokals, and six DFL-Supercups. Internationally, they won the UEFA Champions League in 1997, the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1966, and the Intercontinental Cup in 1997, in addition to being runners-up in the Champions League in 2013 and 2024 and UEFA Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup) in 1993 and 2002. Under the directorship of Michael Zorc in the 2010s, Dortmund cultivated a reputation for spotting and developing young talent, and have remained focused on developing a youth system. As of 2024, Dortmund had the second most revenue across football clubs in Germany, and the 12th most revenue across all football teams in the world, per Deloitte's Football Money League.

Did You Know?

• The club was founded on 19 December 1909 by a group of young men unhappy with the Catholic church-sponsored Trinity Youth.
• The name Borussia is Latin for Prussia but was taken from Borussia beer from the nearby Borussia brewery in Dortmund.
• Dortmund's Friedhelm Konietzka scored the first-ever Bundesliga goal a minute into the match in 1963.
• In 1997, Dortmund won the UEFA Champions League with a 3–1 victory over Juventus in Munich.