On this day in 1900 11 players from Munich gymnastics club established a football club Bayern. In a few months, they already achieved significant results by entering the semi-finals of the South German championship. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the club encountered problems because the president and the coach were Jews. The Nazis therefore characterized the club as “Jewish”. There was a purge, the club president and coach fled from Germany, and the club itself could compete only in the regional league.
It was only after World War II that the club was restored. Bayern experienced its golden years during the late sixties and seventies, when the great ones like Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, and Sepp Maier played. To this day Bayern won the German championship as many as 23 times (thus being by far the most successful club in the history of German football) and also won the UEFA Champions League (former European Champion Clubs’ Cup) five times. With those five wins it is a tie with Liverpool, and only Real Madrid and AC Milan are ahead. Bayern played at the Olympic Stadium in Munich until 2005, the year it opened its new stadium – the Allianz Arena.
