FC St. Pauli

The Millerntor sits where the Reeperbahn's neon gives way to the harbour. Before 1963 the club played on the open Heiligengeistfeld nearby, and for nearly three decades after that the ground carried the name Wilhelm-Koch-Stadion, until the club found out what its former president had done under the Nazis and gave the stadium back its old name. A reconstruction that ran from 2006 to 2015 rebuilt the stands one at a time, and the place now holds 29,546, split almost evenly between seats and standing room.

The club grew out of the football section of a gymnastics association, Hamburg-St. Pauli Turnverein 1862, and split off on its own in 1924.

That identity nearly went bankrupt in 2003. St. Pauli owed 1.9 million euros and stood to lose its licence, and supporters raised 2.367 million euros to save it — selling "Retter" shirts, staging a fundraising match against Bayern Munich. Ewald Lienen , who had once played for St. Pauli, came back as coach and led the club back into the Bundesliga in 2010.

Across the city, Hamburger SV has never been just another fixture. The Stadtderby carries the old class lines of the city with it — HSV read as the establishment club, St. Pauli as the counter to it — and St. Pauli went from 1977 to 2011 without beating them in the Bundesliga. In 2024, St. Pauli won the 2. Bundesliga for the second time and returned to the top flight, where the club begins this season looking to stay there.