 Borussia Mönchengladbach is one of the traditional football clubs of the German `Bundesliga ë.It was founded in 1900 by a few men who were interested in the new sport, namely football .At the beginning they had to fight their way through the lower divisions, but then in1963 they reached a major aim: the promotion to the first German division , into which they climbed together with Bayern Munich . At that moment nobody could expect that these two clubs were going to be two of the European top clubs . Borussia’s first big success was the championship in 1970. They repeated this success with a lot of young players the following year. During these years, work on the new stadium was finished. It had a capacity of 35500 people , which was quite a lot for that time. The following three years Bayern Munich were German champions , but then it was again the turn of Mönchengladbach. They achieved a hattrick of championships with players like Berti Vogts (who went on to become German national coach) , Jupp Heynckes (coach of Bayern Munich, CD Teneriffa, Real Madrid ) and a whole lot of other young talents. The following year, the title race was decided on the last day of the season. 
It could have been FC Köln (against St. Pauli), or Borussia Mönchengladbach (against Bor. Dortmund ) and the goal difference would play a major part .Gladbach won 12:0 (until now the highest win in Germany) ,but it was not enough because Köln won 5:0 and finally had scored more goals throughout the season. But that was not too bad because the following year they won the UEFA cup for the second time (after 1975). That was the last title Borussia won for more than 15 years. Their problem was the same as that of many smaller clubs because the best players wanted to earn more money and left the club.  The consequences were that the next ten years they played no important role in the championship .
In 1990 the club employed a new manager (Rolf Rüssmann) who tried to build up a new team , which slowly began to have success again and then in 1995 , they won the cup . But that was the only positive thing in the 90’s .The manager planned to build a new stadium (which would have cost a fortune) and signed new players who did not play as well as expected and the result was that the team slowly slid down in the table and was faced with relegation fights in the last two seasons. This year it seems that there is no hope for them to escape the inevitable. The consequence of this unsuccessful time is that there were 6 different coaches in the last 3 years and finally they fired the manager this year .
At the moment, the club has a lot of problems with money and the team is bottom of the table in the championship, but with their new coach success seems to come back, maybe because there are again some big talents, like in the 70’s......... If you want to know more about this club: www.borussia.de |
