Borussia Mönchengladbach

The Rhine Derby has run since both clubs shared the top flight through the 1970s.

The club that plays that derby now was not the one founded on 1 August 1900. A group of members broke away from TC Germania Gladbach on 17 November 1899 to start their own football section, and for its first years the team sat inside a Catholic youth congregation before splitting off as an independent Verein in 1903. A brief 1919 merger with the gymnastics club Turnverein Germania produced something called VfTuR 1889 M.Gladbach; it did not last, and Borussia's name and structure came back within a short spell. The name itself is the Latin word for Prussia.

Everything that made the club a name beyond the Rhineland happened inside a single decade. That team is still the reference point: good enough that in 1972 he became the first Gladbach player to finish runner-up for the Ballon d'Or. Allan Simonsen went one better in 1977 and remains the only Gladbach player to have won it outright, in a career at the club that brought him 117 goals in 249 appearances. That golden run ended at the top: Liverpool beat Gladbach in the 1977 European Cup final.

The club now plays out of Borussia-Park. No single figure from that era carries the club's history better than Berti Vogts, who captained the side, still holds the appearance record with 538 matches, and went on to win the World Cup with West Germany in 1974.