Fußball 101: Naming a football club
TSV? VfL? Why are there so many numbers? What does Borussia even mean? A brief explainer on naming conventions in German football
Before we start, an update on this newsletter.
Last week I didn’t post. This is a mix of factors. One, the state of the world has affected my productivity. On Wednesday morning at around 4:30 am, I made the rookie mistake of all rookie mistakes. After waking up for a trip to the bathroom, I looked at my phone. The New York Times’ dial was red lining, pointing almost 180 degrees to the right. Needless to say I didn’t get back to sleep, and spent the rest of the day in a state of misanthropy.
Two, I’m busy with other things. I’ve started writing for a couple of other sport titles, I’ll be in the press box at this Sunday’s NFL game in Munich and my B2B podcasting/content writing/journalism (I’m available, call me) work has picked up after a few months of stagnation.
Three, I have two features more or less ready to go for this newsletter. One of them is an interview with a fan group called Unsere Kurve, the other is a historical feature on the role football played in the Third Reich. The latter involved studying harrowing atrocities, interviewing people with vast knowledge, translating those conversations and ultimately writing on a topic that requires complete focus. Needless to say, that isn’t always easy to do with other things going on.
So, if you like what I do, please share it. Take the link, and send it to the one person in your phone, you think would enjoy it. Go on, I dare you.
A lot of people seem to think asking for more subscribers is beneath them. I don’t. I enjoy working on this, and the bigger it gets, the more time I can afford it. It has already helped me speak to editors I admire greatly, and maybe I can turn it into something that earns me a few bob as well. *Cough* become a paid subscriber *cough*. Sorry I was just clearing my throat.
As I missed last week’s instalment, there will be two emails next week. We should have another podcast by the end of the month. So yeah, that’s what’s going on at Bundesletter HQ. Now for a silly blog about club names. Bis später!
What’s in a name? In England, we like to keep it simple. Insert name of town/city/borough, add a suffix if you feel like it. Manchester United. Chelsea. Yeovil Town. Charlton Athletic. MK Dons. Actually forget the last one.
The letters, prefixes, suffixes and numbers in a German football club are enough to drop some Anglophones reading levels a couple of key stages. How many times have you heard someone say Bayer’n’ Leverkusen? Or struggle to get their nut around Dortmund sometimes being referred to as BVB?
Luckily, once you get your eye in, it’s just as formulaic, and it can actually reveal a great deal about a club’s history. Let’s work through it together. Most club’s full names can be broken down into five elements. The last is little more than a technicality. At one time, all German football clubs would have ended their name with ‘eingetragener Verein’ (registered association or club). Any club wishing to play in a registered league in Germany must officially register as such. It’s very rare to see clubs incorporate this acronym in their ‘brand’ (for lack of a better term).
Let’s break down the four changeable elements:
1. An acronym describing the club’s purpose
What do you mean ‘purpose’? It’s a football club. Well, not all teams start out that way. Multi-club organisations are common in Germany, especially for clubs that date back to the earliest days of organised football.
Take the abbreviation ‘TSV’. TSV 1860 München, the oldest club in Munich, started life as a gymnastics and personal fitness club, styled after the teaching of ‘Turnvater Jahn’. TSV standing for Turn- und Sportverein (Gymnastics and sport club). The club, originally founded in 1848 (more on that later) didn’t begin playing football until 1899, making their name a bit confusing.
Others are more straightforward. There are plenty of FC’s about. Your Kölns, your Union Berlins, your Bayern Münchens. Others include VfL (Verein für Leibesertüchtigung loosely translated as Club for Sport/Physical Training), SpvGG (Spielvereinigung meaning ‘Games Association) and BV (Ballspielverein meaning ball games). The latter explains Dortmund’s moniker BVB, as it conflates the acronym with the club’s chosen name.
2. Nickname (for lack of a better term)
Next comes a club’s chosen name. The imagination used to pluck these names out of the air varies greatly, as Uli Hesse explains in his history of German football, Tor:
“The founders of the earliest German football organisations were often middle-class students at some of the more liberal educational establishments, mostly secondary schools with a bias towards Latin and Greek, and the people growing up in such an environment consequently had a taste for fancy-sounding names of Roman origin.”
Many chose patriotic names such as Alemannia or Germannia, which in turn birthed a trend of expressing allegiance to states or former kingdoms. ‘Borussia’ is the old latin name for Prussia, while Bayern is the German name for Bavaria.
Others simply looked down at their kit and thought, ‘that’ll do’. ‘Rot-Weiß’, ‘Blau-Weiß’ or ‘Schwarz-Weiß’, will feel familiar to any Pro Evolution players from the mid-00s.
Hansa Rostock take their name from the town’s history as a key node in the Hanseatic League. Bayer Leverkusen are named after their benefactors, the Bayer Group. The club was founded by workers from the company, and remains one of the few exemptions to the ‘50+1’ rule. Energie Cottbus is a hangover from the DDR, where clubs were named after their affiliated state department.
3. Place name
We can move on quickly from this one right?
4. A Year
You’d think this would be pretty simple too. The number has to be the year the club was founded, and for the most part you’d be right.
However, the truth isn’t always that easy to pin down. Let’s go back to TSV 1860 München. The club was originally founded in 1848 during riots against the Bavarian monarchy. Considered a safe harbour for republican agitators, the club was dissolved a year later, and was reformed in 1860.
Some notable clubs don’t have a number in their name at all, while others conceal it. VfL Wolfsburg founded in 1945 have no number in their name, while you never see ‘FC Bayern München 1900 e.V.’ written out in full (perhaps because of the perception of 1860 as the city’s true first club’.
Wörterbuch-Ecke — German football phrases you need to know
Sprichwort: Hexenkessel
Direct translation: Cauldron
Spiritual translation: Tough place to go
Typically, I use this space to drill down on a player, club or story that embodies the chosen phrase. In this case, picking one stadium that best exhibits the feverish atmosphere you can find across Germany is impossible.
Instead, I’ll compare the experiences at my two clubs. Charlton Athletic and Union Berlin.
The Valley is my spiritual home. That will never change. But is it a tough place to go? Is it a cauldron? Hardly.
Back when we filled the place, during the glory years, it was full of Blackheath blow-ins, happy to sit on their hands and barely get behind the team. The appeal was Premier League football, not supporting the club unconditionally. More recently, with attendances dwindling, the atmosphere has punched above its weight. During the 2018/19 promotion season, the North Upper was popping. The fans were so engaged, but still. We’re the lads that play ‘The Red, Red Robin’ before kickoff.
Compare that to a day out at the Alte Fösterei. If you aren’t singing, you’re in the minority. If you aren’t skulling a couple of beers before, during, and after the game, you’re in the minority. If you duck out early to beat the crowds, you’re in the minority. If you boo? Don’t ever show your face in this forest again.
In the other German grounds I’ve visited, the home support is remarkably vocal. I’d say that’s the biggest difference between English and German football. As ‘legacy’ fans in the UK slowly get priced out, as they start to lose their voices, as their stadium gets gentrified, true cauldrons are few and far between.
After reading this, I thought about two things:
1. American team names in traditional leagues always have a place and a mascot. That didn't start because they were franchises, but it does make the perception of continuity possible after a franchise moves: Philadelphia Athletics > Kansas City Athletics > Oakland Athletics > [definitely not Sacramento] Athletics > Las Vegas Athletics (if they decide/allow the mascot to move again). That would never work with German naming conventions because the place is the most identifiable part of the name. (Also, it makes the time that the Phillies tried to be the Philadelphia Philadelphias and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim seem a little less ridiculous).
2. I looked up the real name of RB Leipzeig. RasenBallsport, not Red Bull! There was a faint hint of memory in my brain popping up like I had heard this before, but their little marketing maneuver worked because I forgot that it wasn't Red Bull. I wish there was a English-language club that used Lawn Ball Sports somehow, and I wonder if their not-wrong-but-goofy name riled up the other fans before they even got promoted.