Borussia Dortmund

Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e.V. Dortmund, commonly known as Borussia Dortmund [boˈʁʊsi̯a ˈdɔʁtmʊnt],Dortmund, or BVB, is a German sports club based in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia. The football team is part of a large membership-based sports club with more than 115,000 members, making BVB the third largest sports club by membership in Germany. Dortmund plays in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system. Dortmund is one of the most successful clubs in German football history.

Borussia Dortmund was founded in 1909 by eighteen football players from Dortmund. Borussia Dortmund have won eight German championships, three DFB-Pokals, five DFL-Supercups, one UEFA Champions League, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, and one Intercontinental Cup. Their Cup Winners' Cup win in 1966 made them the first German club to win a European title.

Since 1974, Dortmund have played their home games at Westfalenstadion. The stadium is the largest in Germany and Dortmund has the highest average attendance of any association football club in the world. Borussia Dortmund's colours are black and yellow, giving the club its nickname die Schwarzgelben. Dortmund holds a long-standing rivalry with Ruhr neighbours Schalke 04, known as the Revierderby. Dortmund also has a rivalry with Bayern Munich. In terms of Deloitte's annual Football Money League, Dortmund is the second biggest sports club in Germany and the 11th biggest football team in the world.

Manchester United F.C.

Manchester United Football Club is a professional football club based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, that competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.

Manchester United have won 20 league titles, the most of any English club, 11 FA Cups, four League Cups and a record 20 FA Community Shields. The club has also won three European Cups, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, one Intercontinental Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup. In 1998–99, the club became the first in the history of English football to achieve the treble of the Premier League, the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League.

The 1958 Munich air disaster claimed the lives of eight players. In 1968, under the management of Matt Busby, Manchester United became the first English football club to win the European Cup. Alex Ferguson won 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League titles, 5 FA Cups and 2 UEFA Champions Leagues, between 1986 and 2013, when he announced his retirement. Louis van Gaal is the club's current manager after Ferguson's successor David Moyes was sacked after only 10 months in charge.

Dortmund

Dortmund ([ˈdɔɐ̯tmʊnt]; Low German: Düörpm [ˈdyːœɐ̯pm̩]; Latin: Tremonia) is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the middle part of the state and is considered to be the administrative, commercial and cultural centre of the region. Its population of 575,944 (2013) makes it the 8th largest city in Germany. Moreover, Dortmund is the largest city by area and population in the Ruhr Area, an urban area with some 5.1 million (2011) inhabitants which is the largest urban agglomeration in Germany.

Founded around 882, Dortmund became an Imperial Free City. Throughout the 13th to 14th centuries, it was the "chief city" of the Rhine, Westphalia, the Netherlands Circle of the Hanseatic League. After the Thirty Years' War the city was destroyed and decreased in significance until the onset of industrialization. The city then became one of Germany's most important coal, steel and beer centres until the 1970s.

Dortmund is home to many cultural and educational institutions, including the Technical University of Dortmund and Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, International School of Management and other educational, cultural and administrative facilities with over 49,000 students, many museums, such as Museum Ostwall, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, German Football Museum, as well as theatres and music venues like the Konzerthaus or the opera house of Dortmund. The city is known as Westphalia's "green metropolis". Nearly half the municipal territory consists of waterways, woodland, agriculture and green spaces with spacious parks such as Westfalenpark and Rombergpark. This stands in a stark contrast with nearly a hundred years of extensive coal mining and steel milling within the city limits.

Hertha BSC

Hertha Berliner Sport-Club von 1892, commonly known as Hertha BSC or Hertha Berlin (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛʁtaː beː ʔɛs t͡seː]), is a German association football club based in Berlin. Hertha BSC was founded in 1892. A founding member of the German Football Association in Leipzig in 1900. Hertha BSC play in the Bundesliga, the top-tier division of German football, after finishing at the top of the 2. Bundesliga table at the end of the 2012–13 season. Hertha BSC have won the German championship in 1930 and 1931. Since 1963, Hertha BSC's stadium is the Olympiastadion.

History

Early years

The club was formed in 1892 as BFC Hertha 92, taking its name from a steamship with a blue and white smokestack. One of the four young men who founded the club had taken a day trip on this ship with his father. The name Hertha is a variation on Nerthus referring to fertility goddess from Germanic mythology.

Hertha performed consistently well on the field, including a win in the first Berlin championship final in 1905. In May 1910, Hertha won a friendly match against Southend United F.C., which was considered significant at the time as England was where the game originated and English clubs dominated the sport. However, their on-field success was not matched financially and in 1920 the staunchly working-class Hertha merged with the well-heeled club Berliner Sport-Club to form Hertha Berliner Sport-Club. The new team continued to enjoy considerable success in the Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg, while also enduring a substantial measure of frustration. The team played its way to the German championship final in six consecutive seasons from 1926 to 1931, but were only able to come away with the title in 1930 and 1931 with BSC leaving to become an independent club again after the combined side's first championship. Even so, Hertha emerged as the Germany's second most successful team during the inter-war years.

FC Schalke 04

Fußballclub Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04 e. V., commonly known as FC Schalke 04 (German: [ʔɛf t͡seː ˈʃalkə nʊl fiːɐ̯]) or simply abbreviated as S04 (German: [ˈʔɛs nʊl fiːɐ̯]), is a professional German association-football club and multi-sports club originally from the Schalke district of Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The "04" in the club's name derives from its formation in 1904. Schalke has long been one of the most popular professional football teams and multi-sports club in Germany, even though major successes have been rare since the club's heyday in the 1930s and early 1940s. Schalke play in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system. The club has 140,000 members (as of December 2015), making it the second-largest sports club in Germany and the sixth-largest sports club in the world in terms of membership. Other activities offered by the club include athletics (track and field), basketball, handball, table tennis, and winter sports.

Founded in 1904, Schalke has won seven German championships, five DFB-Pokals, one DFL-Supercup and one UEFA Cup.