Dynamo Dresden

The team grew out of a police sports club. In April 1953, officials in Dresden reorganised SV Deutsche Volkspolizei Dresden into a section of the Dynamo sports association, the network tied to East Germany's state security apparatus. The badge changed, the backing changed.

Black and yellow arrived later, in 1968, when Dynamo was designated a centre of excellence and took the colours of the city itself. That decision outlasted the state that made it. When Germany reunified the club became 1. FC Dynamo Dresden, and it kept that name until 2007, when supporters pushed it back to SG Dynamo Dresden.

The 1970s belong to Hans-Jürgen Dörner, who played for the club from 1970 to 1988 and holds its appearance record. He captained the East German national side and was named the country's footballer of the year in 1977 — a season in which Dresden took both the league and the FDGB-Pokal. Around him the side collected eight league titles and seven cups, the last of each in 1990.

Europe was a harder ceiling. Dresden reached the quarter-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup, and stopped there each time.

The rivalry that defined the era ran to Berlin. BFC Dynamo, founded out of the same association a year after Dresden, competed for the same patronage and the same league, and won ten championships in a row between 1979 and 1988. Matches against Hansa Rostock still carry the name Ostderby.

Now the club plays in the 2. Bundesliga, where it finished 11th in 2024/25, at the Rudolf-Harbig-Stadion, which holds 32,249 and takes 27,000 for international fixtures. Ulf Kirsten left for Bayer Leverkusen in 1990.

Seventy-odd years on, the ground sits a short walk from where the police sports club once trained.