Werder Bremen
Some prominent Bremen players:
Marco Bode, Horst-Dieter Höttges, Frank Neubarth, Rudi Völler, Ailton, Karl-Heinz Riedle, Mario Basler, Andreas Herzog, Dieter Burdenski, Dieter Eilts, Oliver Reck, Benno Möhlmann
In 1898, a group of vocational students in Bremen won a competition. They chose some athletic equipment as their prize and amongst the objects received was a soccer ball. At that time still relatively unknown, the students took the ball to a part of town called Werder along the Weser River. Much to their surprie, they liked the sport so much that they founded a club on February, 4, 1899 – Football Club FV Werder Bremen. Like many great enterprises, the Bundesliga soccer team Werder Bremen had a simple beginning.
The founders at that time were ambitious. They started charging admission for spectators to see their games. 10 years after the club’s founding in 1909, Bremen invited a team from the motherland of soccer, England, to play. Werder Bremen proved to be the best club in the Hanseatic city and busily worked to expand that image.
After World War I, Bremen became the first team in the city to hire and pay a professional coach, the Hungarian Franz Konya. During the Weimar Republic, Werder Bremen consistently produced some of the best teams but their nearby neighbors and rivals, Hamburg SV always edged them out. The team pressed ahead. Almost without exception, players in the 1920’s were amateurs but things gradually changed in the 1930’s. More and more, paid athletes began to dominate soccer in Germany and Werder Bremen kept pace. The summit of the first fifty years was reached during World War II under coach Walter Hollstein. The fall of the Third Reich sounded a new beginning for German soccer and soccer in Bremen, however. The club was disbanded by the Allied powers in 1945, only to be reconstituted less than one year later.
Coming out of the ashes of World War II
In these early stages, the rivalry with Hamburg SV was rekindled but Werder was a riddle thoughout the 1950’s. It would topple the stronger clubs but mysteriously lose to weaker ones. Finally, 62 years after its founding, Werder Bremen won its first big competition when it beat Kaiserslautern in the German Cup in September 1961. Two years later, in 1963, the Bundesliga was born. In that first season, Bremen finished 10th but in the 1964/65 season, Werder played sensationally and took home the championship. Following that title, coach Willi Multhaupt left for Dortmund and seemingly took all the team’s success. Werder floated up and down in the league standings for the better part of two decades, being only an occasional serious challenger. The lowpoint was relegation after the 1979/80 season.
The era of Rehhagel
The team’s fortunes changed during the middle of that one season in the second league – thanks to someone’s misfortune. Then coach Kuno Klötzer was injured in a car accident. The managers made a decision that would turn out to be a stroke of genius – they brought in Otto Rehhagel. He had already coached the team all of four months in 1976. This stint would last 14 years.
As coach, Rehhagel and Bremen won two league titles (1988 and 1993) and were twice victorious in the German Cup (1991 and 1994). Bremen became a force to compete with. They also became a team that could come back from the worst of all situations, particularly in international competition, turning big deficits around in the second leg against teams like Spartak Moscow, Dynamo Berlin, Napels (with then world class player Diego Maradona) and Anderlecht. The European success culminated with a victory in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1992. But when the eternally good-spirited Rehhagel left in 1995 to go to of all places, Bayern Munich, Werder returned where it left off before "King" Otto took over in 1981 -- to the middle of the Bundesliga standings.
Thomas Schaaf returns Bremen to glory
That changed though when Thomas Schaaf was named head coach on May 10, 1999. Under his guidance, Werder turned the ship around. Always improving, constantly gaining ground until it won its fourth overall championship and the German Cup behind Ailton, Johan Micoud, Fabian Ernst and Tim Borowski in 2004. Schaaf is already the second-longest serving coach in the club’s history in the Bundesliga. He may not (yet) be cherished as fondly as Rehhagel, but a league title and a German Cup championship speak loads. And he achieved that in less time than Rehhagel. Bremen fans have lots to look forward to with Schaaf – unless he did the unspeakable and wandered off to Bayern Munich
Current Bremen squad:
Andreas Reinke (1), Frank Fahrenhorst (2), Petri Pasanen (3), Fabian Ernst (4), Ümit Davala (5), Frank Baumann (6), Paul Stalteri (7), Krisztian Lisztes (8), Johan Micoud (10), Miroslav Klose (11), Gustavo Nery (13), Aaron Hunt (14), Pascal Borel (16), Ivan Klasnic (17), Daniel Jensen (20), Mohamed Zidan (21), Francis Banecki (22), Ludovic Magnin (23), Tim Borowski (24), Valérien Ismaël (25), Christian Schulz (27), Alexander Walke (31), Marco Stier (35), Nelson Valdez (38)
Coach: Thomas Schaaf