Stuttgart II

Every Bundesliga club needs somewhere to put the teenagers it signs, and in Stuttgart that place has had a name since 1959. For most of its life it was VfB Stuttgart Amateure — the amateurs — and it played to the ceiling the German game set for it: allowed to win everything on offer below the professional tiers, barred from climbing past a certain point no matter how the season finished. Twice it won the national amateur championship, in 1963 and again in 1980, and that was as far as the ladder went.

The name changed to Stuttgart II in 2005, and the restrictions changed shape rather than lifted. A reserve side cannot play in the same division as the club that owns it, and since the 3. Liga arrived in 2008 it cannot enter the DFB-Pokal at all — so a cup run is off the table before a ball is kicked.

What it has instead is the ground. The GAZi-Stadion auf der Waldau opened in 1905 and remains the oldest football stadium in Germany still staging professional matches.

The 3. Liga years from 2008 ran until 2016, when the side finished bottom and went down. Eight seasons in the Regionalliga Südwest followed, against the reserve teams of Hoffenheim, Freiburg and Kaiserslautern, and against Karlsruher SC II. In 2023/24 Stuttgart II won the league and got over the line back into the third tier.

Mario Gómez passed through on his way up, 43 matches and 21 goals before the first team took him for good and the Bundesliga title of 2007 followed.