Bayern Munich Women

Wolfsburg is the name that matters most here: the two clubs have carried the Frauen-Bundesliga between them for most of the last decade, trading titles back and forth in a way no other German side has managed to interrupt for long.

The women's side at Bayern only became possible once the German Football Association lifted its ban on women's football, and the department was set up on 7 June 1970 — though women had already been kicking a ball at the club since 1967. A German Championship followed in 1976, in the years before the Bundesliga existed for women at all, and when the Frauen-Bundesliga was founded in 1990, Bayern were among its founding members. It did not go smoothly: they were relegated after that first season and did not get back to the top flight until 2000.

Since then the title has come round often — 2015, 2016, 2021, 2023 and 2024. Most weeks the team plays at the Stadion im FC Bayern Campus, a 2,500-seat ground, but for Champions League nights and the biggest league fixtures it moves to the Allianz Arena, where crowds run closer to 15,000.

In Europe, the club has reached a Champions League semi-final twice, in 2018–19 and 2020–21, and a run of quarter-finals either side of those, without yet getting through to a final. José Barcala took over as head coach, with the squad now built around signings like Pernille Harder and Magdalena Eriksson, both arrived in 2023, as Bayern look to turn one more European quarter-final into something further.