Essen

Guðjón Valur Sigurðsson arrived from Iceland in 2001. It was not the first time TUSEM had to be rebuilt. Under the Romanian coach Petre Ivănescu the club had gone through its defining years, taking the German Championship in 1986, 1987 and 1989, adding the DHB-Pokal in 1988, 1991 and 1992, and lifting the EHF Cup Winners' Cup in 1989 and the Euro-City-Cup in 1994.

None of it protected the club from what came next. Essen declared insolvency in November 2008 and dropped straight down again, and the years since have moved in the same up-and-down pattern: promotion back to the Bundesliga in 2020, relegation the following year, and a return to life in the 2. Bundesliga.

Matches against TSV Bayer Dormagen are still billed as the Rhein-Ruhr-Derby, and the club plays them at the Sportpark "Am Hallo". The rivalry with VfL Eintracht Hagen carries the same regional weight, a reminder that Essen's story has always been tied to the Ruhr as much as to any trophy in its cabinet — going back to a gymnastics and sports society founded in the city on 20 October 1926.