Peter Fischer

Lore & Background

Eintracht Frankfurt have either won or drawn more than three-quarters of their games as well as having finished the majority of their seasons placed in the top half of the table, but also having the highest number of losses in the league (717). With an average attendance of 59,071 in the 2025-26 Bundesliga season, the 4th highest attendance in the league. The player with the highest number of appearances (602) in the Bundesliga, Charly Körbel, spent his entire senior career as a defender for Eintracht Frankfurt. The club's primary rival is local club Kickers Offenbach, although, due to spending most of their history in different divisions, the two have only played two league matches within the last 40 years. With almost 14,000 active athletes in over 50 sports in 2024, Eintracht Frankfurt is the largest multi-sports club in the world with a professional football team.

Reader's Guide

The origins of the club go back to a pair of football clubs founded in 1899: Frankfurter Fußball-Club Victoria von 1899 and Frankfurter Fußball-Club Kickers von 1899. Both clubs were founding members of the new Nordkreis-Liga in 1909. These two teams merged in May 1911 to become Frankfurter Fußball Verein (Kickers-Victoria), an instant success, taking three league titles from 1912 to 1914 in the Nordkreis-Liga and qualifying for the Southern German championship in each of those seasons.

In turn, Frankfurter FV joined the gymnastics club Frankfurter Turngemeinde von 1861 to form TuS Eintracht Frankfurt von 1861 in 1920. The German word Eintracht means 'harmony' or 'concord'. At the time, sports in Germany was dominated by nationalistic gymnastics organizations, and under pressure from that sport's governing authority, the gymnasts and footballers went their separate ways again in 1927, as Turngemeinde Eintracht Frankfurt von 1861 and Sportgemeinde Eintracht Frankfurt (FFV) von 1899.

Through the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Eintracht won a handful of local and regional championships. After being eliminated from the national level playoffs after quarterfinal losses in 1930 and 1931, they won their way to the final in 1932 where they were beaten 2–0 by Bayern Munich. In 1933, German football was re-organized into sixteen Gauligen under the Third Reich, and the club played first division football in the Gauliga Südwest, consistently finishing in the upper half of the table and winning their division in 1938.

Eintracht picked up where they left off after World War II, joining the new first division Oberliga Süd. In 1946, Eintracht won the first Hessenpokal, and finished third in the Oberliga Süd a year later. In 1953, they would win the Oberliga Süd title, qualifying Eintracht for the German championship, though they did not make it to the final. Former coach Paul Oßwald returned to the club for a third stint with Eintracht in 1958.

In the 1958-59 season the club won their Oberliga again, qualifying for the 1959 German championship. Winning all six of the games in the group phase, Eintracht made it to the final with a perfect record; there, they would meet rivals Kickers Offenbach. Frankfurt went on to win the final 5-3 after extra time, becoming German champions for the first and so far only time.