Borussia Dortmund - Club Snapshot - German soccer team

Soccer Digest, March, 2003

* The Borussia Dortmund club was founded in 1909 after a merger of Rhennia and Britannia and a splinter group from Trinity. The name "Borussia" is derived from a local brewery that players from the Trinity club would walk past on their way to their home field, Weisse Wiese ("white meadow"). Today, Dortmund is most closely associated with the with steelworkers from the Ruhr region, Germany's industrial northwest.

* The 3-million [pounds sterling] purchase of international defender Matthias Sammer in 1995 is credited with being the fuel that brought Dortmund their mid-90s success. Seven years later, the club was partially floated on the stock market with great success and Sammer--then the team's manager--was handed 30 million [pounds sterling] with which to purchase new players. He did so wisely, acquiring Amoroso and Jan Koller, and leading the team to the 2002 Bundesliga title and UEFA Cup championship.

* Dortmund also won the Bundesliga in 1995 and 1996 and captured the West German League title three times (1956-57 and 1963).

* Dortmund's Westfalenstadion was constructed for the 1974 World Cup finals and is one of the few top-flight German stadiums built solely for soccer--most of the others have tracks surrounding the field. Oddly, the Westfalenstadion also retains its terraces, which are replaced by seats to comply with UEFA regulations during continental and international matches.

* In the mid-1930s, Dortmund hired a full-time coach, Fritz Thelen. The move paid off the next year when the team was promoted to its area's top league for the first time. Two years later, the club formed its first youth team.

* Dortmund played in the first post-WWII match at Berlin's Olympic Stadium, on June 5, 1949, but one of their star players nearly didn't make it. Max Michallek overslept and missed his team's train to Berlin. Michallek hitched a ride with the only vehicle heading to Berlin, a coal wagon, and spent the trip shoveling coal in order to pay his fare. Fortunately for Michallek, the club called ahead to warn border patrols that he may be trying to enter the zoned city. When he arrived in Berlin and mimed for Russian soldiers, they recognized that he was Borussia's missing soccer player and allowed him entry.

* Brazilian star Amoroso was the Bundesliga's co-leader in goals in 2001-02--the first time a Dortmund player topped the scoring table since Roland Emmerich did it 1966-67 (28 goals). Two years prior to that, Emmerich set a then-Bundesliga record by scoring 31 goals in a season.

* Oft-maligned forward Jovan Kirovski became the only American to earn a Champions League medal when Dortmund captured the 1997 title. Kirovski, a squad player, even scored a goal in the competition.

* Borussia were the first German team to win a European title, defeating Liverpool, 2-1, in the 1966 Cup Winner's Cup final. After its 2002 UEFA win, the club became one of only five teams to have won all three European club crowns. The others are Ajax Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Juventus.