TV Stuttgart

Kai Häfner had only just arrived from Rhein-Neckar Löwen when he put in the shot that stood as the club's 2,000th goal in the Bundesliga, a milestone that said more about how far TVB Stuttgart had travelled than any line in a history book could. Patrick Zieker, the captain since 2019, was the man who had actually been there for most of that journey, holding the left wing through the seasons when the club was still finding its feet in the top flight.

The name goes back to Turn- und Sportverein Bittenfeld, founded in 1898 in what is now a district of Waiblingen; handball only became a department there in 1925. For decades the club stayed a regional concern, and it was not until promotion to the 2. Bundesliga South in 2006, then a place in the unified second division in 2011, that a route to the top flight opened up. Promotion arrived in 2015, and with it the rebrand to TVB 1898 Stuttgart and a move of home matches into the city, to the Porsche-Arena.

Staying up has been the harder part. The best league finish came only in 2023/24, eleventh place, and the deepest cup run stopped twice in the quarter-finals, in 2018 and again a year later, when THW Kiel edged the tie 35:34. Games against Frisch Auf Göppingen, played as the Schwaben-Derby, draw the sharpest reaction from both sets of supporters, sharper even than the meetings with HBW Balingen-Weilstetten.

A Bundesliga title has never been within reach, and the DHB-Pokal has gone no further than those two quarter-finals.