VfB Stuttgart
Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V., commonly known as VfB Stuttgart, is a German professional sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club's football team is currently part of Germany's first division, the Bundesliga. VfB Stuttgart has won the national championship five times, most recently in 2006–07, the DFB-Pokal four times and the UEFA Intertoto Cup a record two times. In the all-time Bundesliga table the club sits in fourth place.
The football team plays its home games at the MHPArena, in the Neckarpark which is located near the Cannstatter Wasen, where the city's fall beer festival takes place. Second team side VfB Stuttgart II currently plays in the 3. Liga, which is the highest division allowed for a reserve team. The club's junior teams have won the national under 19 championships a record ten times and the national under 17 championships seven times.
A membership-based club with over 100,000 members, VfB is the largest sports club in Baden-Württemberg and the eighth-largest football club in Germany. It has departments for fistball, field hockey, track and field, table tennis, and football referees, all of which compete only at the amateur level. The club also maintains an esports department and a social department, the VfB-Garde.
History
Foundation to WWII
Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart was formed through a 2 April 1912 merger of predecessor sides Stuttgarter FV and FC Krone Cannstatt following a meeting in the Concordia hotel in Cannstatt. Each of these clubs was made up of school pupils with middle-class roots who learned new sports such as rugby union and football from English expatriates such as William Cail who introduced rugby in 1865.FV Stuttgart
Stuttgarter Fußballverein was founded at the Zum Becher hotel in Stuttgart on 9 September 1893. FV were initially a rugby club, playing games at Stöckach-Eisbahn before moving to Cannstatter Wasen in 1894. The rugby club established a football section in 1908. The team drew players primarily from local schools, under the direction of teacher Carl Kaufmann, and quickly achieved its first success; in 1909, they were runners-up to FSV 1897 Hannover in the national rugby final, losing 6–3. Rugby was soon replaced by association football within the club, as spectators found the game too complicated to follow.In 1909, FV joined the Süddeutschen Fußballverband, playing in the second tier B-Klasse. In their second season FV won a district final against future merger partner Kronen-Klub Cannstatt before being defeated by FV Zuffenhausen in the county championship that would have seen the side promoted. They eventually advanced to the senior Südkreis-Liga in 1912.
Kronenclub Cannstatt
Cannstatter Fußballklub was formed as a rugby club in 1890 and also quickly established a football team. This club was dissolved after just a few years of play and the former membership re-organized themselves as FC Krone Cannstatt in 1897 to compete as a football-only side. The new team joined the Süddeutschen Fußballverband as a second division club and won promotion in 1904. Krone possessed their own ground, which still exists today as the home of TSV Münster.Following the 1912 merger of these two clubs, the combined side played at first in the Kreisliga Württemberg and then in the Bezirksliga Württemberg-Baden, earning a number of top three finishes and claiming a title there in 1927. The club also made several appearances in the final rounds of the SFV in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
1930s and 1940s
In 1933, VfB moved to Neckar Stadium, the site of its current ground. German football was re-organized that same year under the Third Reich into sixteen top-flight divisions called Gauligen. Stuttgart played in the Gauliga Württemberg and won division titles in 1935, 1937, 1938, 1940, and 1943 before the Gauliga system collapsed part way through the 1944–45 season due to World War II. The club had an intense rivalry with Stuttgarter Kickers throughout this period.VfB's Gauliga titles earned the team entry to the national playoff rounds, with their best result coming in 1935 when they advanced to the final where they lost 4–6 to defending champions Schalke 04, the dominant side of the era. After a third-place result at the national level in 1937, Stuttgart was not able to advance out of the preliminary rounds in subsequent appearances.
Successes through the 1950s
VfB continued to play first division football in the Oberliga Süd, capturing titles in 1946, 1952, and 1954. They made regular appearances in the German championship rounds, emerging as national champions in 1950 and 1952, finishing as runner-up in 1953, and winning two DFB-Pokal titles in 1954 and 1958. The team which won four titles in eight years was led by Robert Schlienz who had lost his left arm in a car crash. Despite these successes, no player from the Stuttgart squad had a place in the team that won the 1954 FIFA World Cup.Original Bundesligist
Due to disappointing results in international competition including the 1958 and 1962 FIFA World Cup, and in response to the growth of professionalism in the sport, the German Football Association replaced the regional top flight competitions with a single nationwide professional league in 1963. Stuttgart's consistently solid play through the 1950s earned them a place among the 16 clubs that would make up the original Bundesliga. As an amateur organisation, and due to proverbial Swabian austerity, the club hesitated to spend money, and some players continued to work in an everyday job. Throughout the balance of the decade and until the mid-1970s, the club would generally earn mid-table results.In 1973, the team qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time and advanced to the semi-finals of the 1974 tournament where they were eliminated by eventual winners Feyenoord.
1975–2000: Era of president MV
VfB Stuttgart was in crisis in the mid-1970s, having missed new trends in football such as club sponsorship. Attempts to catch up with new levels of professionalism by spending money failed. Towards the end of the 1974–75 season, with the team in imminent danger of being relegated to Second Bundesliga, local politician Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder was elected as new president. However, a draw in the final game of the season meant that VfB would be ranked 16th and lose its Bundesliga status. The first season in the second league, considered the worst in its history, ended with VfB being ranked 11th, having even lost a home game against local rival SSV Reutlingen in front of just 1,200 spectators.With new coach Jürgen Sundermann and new talents like Karlheinz Förster and Hansi Müller, the team built around Ottmar Hitzfeld scored one hundred goals in 1976–77 and thus returned to the top-flight after just two seasons.
The young team were renowned for offensive and high-scoring play, but suffered from lack of experience. At the end of 1977–78, VfB was ranked fourth, but the average attendance of over 53,000 set the league record until the 1990s. In 1978/79 they finished second in the Bundesliga. They made another UEFA Cup semi-final appearance in 1980 and delivered a number of top four finishes on their way to their first Bundesliga title – the club's third national title – in the 1983/84 season, now under coach Helmut Benthaus.
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-0419-044, Uefa-Cup, Dynamo Dresden - VFB Stuttgart 1-1.jpg|thumb|Jürgen Klinsmann against Dynamo Dresden in the semi-final of the 1988–89 UEFA Cup
In 1986, VfB lost the DFB-Pokal final 2–5 to Bayern Munich. In the 1989 UEFA Cup Final, with Jürgen Klinsmann in their ranks, they lost out to Napoli, where Diego Maradona was playing at the time.
In 1991–92, Stuttgart clinched its fourth title, in one of the closest races in Bundesliga history, finishing ahead of Borussia Dortmund on goal difference. Internationally, they had been eliminated from UEFA Cup play that season after losing their second round match to Spanish side Osasuna. As national champions, the club qualified to play in the UEFA Champions League in 1992–93, but were eliminated in the first round by Leeds United after a tie-breaking third match in Barcelona which was required due to coach Christoph Daum having substituted a fourth non-German player in the tie's second leg.
VfB did not qualify for any European competition again until 1997, by way of their third German Cup win, with coach Joachim Löw. They advanced to the 1998 European Cup Winners' Cup final, where they lost to Chelsea in what was the penultimate year of the competition. Only one player of the "magic triangle", captain Krassimir Balakov, remained after Giovane Élber and Fredi Bobic left. Löw's contract was not renewed, and he was replaced by Winfried Schäfer, who in turn was sacked after one season.
Stuttgart's performance, however, fell off after this as the club earned just mid-table results over the next two seasons despite spending money on the transfer market and having veterans like Balakov.
2000–2007: The post-MV-era return to success
Due to high debts and the lack of results, Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder finally resigned from VfB in 2000 to take over offices at the DFB, UEFA, and FIFA. New president Manfred Haas had to renegotiate expensive contracts with players who seldom appeared on the field anyway. As in 1976, when Mayer-Vorfelder had taken over, the team had to be rebuilt by relying on talents from the youth teams. The VfB has Germany's most successful program in the German youth Championship.Coach Ralf Rangnick had started a restructuring of the team that won the Intertoto Cup, but the resulting extra strain of the UEFA Cup participation ended in narrowly escaping from relegation in 2001 by clinching the 15th spot in the league table. Rangnick was replaced by Felix Magath.
With players like Andreas Hinkel, Kevin Kurányi, Timo Hildebrand, and Alexander Hleb earning themselves the nickname "the young and wild", the club soon re-bounded and finished as Bundesliga runners-up in the 2002–03 season. In July 2003, Erwin Staudt became the new president of the club.