FC Bayern Munich is a German sports club based in Munich, Bavaria. It is best known for its professional football team, which plays in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system, and is the most successful club in German football history, having won a record 30 national titles and 20 national cups.
Founded in 1900 by eleven football players led by Franz John, the club had its period of greatest success in the middle of the 1970s when, under the captaincy of Franz Beckenbauer, they won the European Cup three consecutive seasons (1974–76). Overall, Bayern has reached eleven European Cup/UEFA Champions League finals, most recently winning their sixth title in 2020 as part of a continental treble. Bayern has also won one UEFA Cup, one European Cup Winners' Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, one FIFA Club World Cup and two Intercontinental Cups, making it one of the most successful European clubs internationally. Since the formation of the Bundesliga, Bayern has been the dominant club in German football with 29 titles and has won 10 of the last 13 titles. Bayern though being the most dominant club lost their 10 year winstreak in the 2023-2024 season to Bayer 04 Leverkusen.
Through World War II
The club was formed in 1900 when a number of football enthusiasts split from Münchner TurnVerein 1879 to escape the influence of the club's gymnasts, who did not hold a great enthusiasm for the new game, an attitude typical of the times in Germany. Almost from the start, Bayern was a strong local side but failed to have much of an impact beyond that.
For financial reasons, and to take advantage of better facilities held by other clubs, they twice entered into mergers. In 1906, they negotiated a union with Münchner Sport Club. As part of the arrangement, the footballers gave up black as one of their team colours and adopted the red and white of their new partners, which they wear to this day. Bayern won their first title, as champions of the Bavarian league, in 1909 as a department of MSC. In 1919, shortly after World War I, Bayern left MSC, whose focus turned to field hockey and tennis, sports they are still active in today. Bayern then joined forces with Turn- und Sportverein 1890 Jahn München until leaving that club in 1923, and have remained independent ever since.
In those early days, Bavarian football was dominated by teams from Franconia, in the north of the state, notably 1. FC Nürnberg and their twin town neighbours SpVgg Fürth. In 1914, Fürth became the first team from the state to become national champions and by 1930 these two sides had accumulated eight titles between them. Bayern President Kurt Landauer held the office on-and-off from 1913 until 1933 and from 1947 well into the 1950s, adopted a strategic approach to building up the team and challenging this dominance. He hired William Townley as the side's first professional coach. The Englishman was the best coach on the market in Germany and had a championship with Karlsruher FV, in 1910, to his credit.
In 1926, Bayern won the South German Championship, but found themselves outdone by local rivals 1860 München who, in 1931, became the first side from the Bavarian capital to reach the national final. Inside a year, Bayern topped that by even winning the Championship in the final against Eintracht Frankfurt. The team coached by the Hungarian Richard Dombi triumphed through a penalty by Oskar "Ossi" Rohr and another goal by Franz Krumm, 2–0.
But history was against Bayern. The advent of the Hitler regime saw President Landauer, a Jew, resigning quickly, and the team visiting him in his Swiss exile did not help their fortunes in the new era. Dombi, also a Jew, moved to the Netherlands, where he picked up the reins of SC Feijenoord in Rotterdam, laying the foundations for the future greatness of the club. Although the club was widely seen as a Judenklub, president Josef Kellner (1938-43) was an NSDAP member and administrator in the Sudetenland and it had implemented an Aryan clause in 1935.
The last recorded football match played during the Third Reich was the derby between Bayern and 1860 München (3–2) on 23 April 1945. Less than three weeks later, Germany capitulated.
Transition years 1946–1962 After World War II, Bayern played in the Oberliga Süd, which was one of five upper league conferences established in the western half of the country. Through the period from the formation of the Oberligen in 1947 to the creation of the Bundesliga, Germany's professional league, in 1963, they played as a middling side. The best they could manage in their division was third- and fourth-place finishes. They even found themselves relegated to the second tier 2nd Oberliga Süd for the 1956 season – the only time this has happened.
Bayern did enjoy some measure of success outside of regular league play. They captured the 1957 German Cup, just their second national trophy, on a 78th-minute goal by Rudi Jobst against Fortuna Düsseldorf. 16 October 1962 marked the debut of the club on the European scene. In the opening round of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup they beat Basel (3–0), but then went out in the quarter-finals against eventual finalist Dinamo Zagreb (1–4) and (0–0).
Early successes in the Bundesliga With the beginning of the 1963–64 season, the first German division—which until then had been split into five regional divisions—was unified into one national league, the Bundesliga.
The start of the new league saw disappointment for Bayern. As 1860 München had just won the last Oberliga championship—one of the few occasions they have been ahead of Bayern in that era—it was they who joined the new elite of German football. Bayern's newly elected president, Wilhelm Neudecker, the father of the modern FC Bayern, hired Zlatko "Czik" Čajkovski, a former Yugoslav World Cup player in 1950 and 1954, who had also achieved fame for coaching 1. FC Köln to the 1962 championship. This coup paid off, as he formed an aspiring team with the talented young players that should later be referred to as "the axis": goalkeeper Sepp Maier, Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller. After missing out on promotion to the Bundesliga in 1964, finishing second in the league behind Hessen Kassel, Bayern won the Regionalliga Süd (II) in 1965 and gained promotion alongside future rival Borussia Mönchengladbach.
The team, with an average age of 22, immediately reached third place in the league in a year when a sparkling 1860 München won their first and only national championship title. Even more important for Bayern was the win in the Cup final against MSV Duisburg (4–2), leading them into the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup.
The team's star was the 20-year-old Franz Beckenbauer, who finished the season by playing at the 1966 FIFA World Cup in England, where he captured the imagination of a global audience. His efforts were rewarded with a third place in the voting for Europe's Player of the Year.
In the next season, Bayern became the third German team ever to defend the German Cup as Hamburger SV proved easy prey in the final and were defeated with a record 4–0 win. The highlight was the participation in the Cup Winners' Cup in Nuremberg, which the team won in a final 1–0 against Rangers. The goal in extra time was scored by Franz "the Bull" Roth, who would win many other cup finals for Bayern.
A slowdown of progress in the 1967–68 season saw another Yugoslav, Branko Zebec, taking over Čajkovski's job. He curbed the offensive style of the Bayern play and the discipline paid off when Bayern won the 1968–69 Championship with the Cup to boot, the first double in Bundesliga history. During the whole season, Bayern used just 13 players.
Borussia Mönchengladbach, promoted to the Bundesliga in the same year as Bayern, emerged as serious rivals to Bayern's ascendancy. They won the next two championships, and Bayern President Wilhelm Neudecker, on the recommendation of Beckenbauer, called on Udo Lattek from the coaching staff of the national team to take over the reins at Bayern. In his first year, he only managed to return the Cup to the banks of Isar river, but with young and hungry reinforcements such as Paul Breitner and Uli Hoeneß, he formed the team that achieved the first German Championship hat-trick in history.
Golden years In the last match of the 1971–72 season, Bayern sealed their return to Germany's top with a 5–1 win against Schalke 04. Schalke needed a win to get the title but only ended up the best runner-up in Bundesliga history. This was also Bayern's first official match in the new Olympic Stadium. The sell-out crowd of 80,000 assured the club the first gate in excess a 1,000,000 Marks.
Their home ground until then was the Municipal Stadion an der Grünwalder Strasse, colloquially referred to as the Grünwalder, or Sechz'ger ("Sixtier"), as it was owned before the war by 1860 München. It was a pretty run down place with a maximum capacity of around 40,000, mostly standing places. Indeed, it was so downmarket that Munich, the country's third-largest city, had not hosted a single national team match since 1940.
The Olympic Stadium in its heyday considered one of the world's most beautiful and comfortable stadiums, meaning a major boost for Bayern's revenues, not only because of its mere capacity, but also because of the much higher number of premium-priced seats. Thus, the 1972 Olympics in Munich were a major boost for the club and assured them financial superiority at least until the 1974 World Cup with its flood of new and rebuilt stadiums in the rest of the country. Successive successful seasons on the European stage helped to fill the stadium in an era when the gate revenue was still the very major source of income. Sponsorships and TV rights were a welcome but minor addition to annual budgets that were then around five million euros. Transfer fee surpluses could also contribute, but, if achieved, meant generally a loss of quality in the team.
The availability of players developed internally or acquired as youth, combined with restrictions on foreign players in the Italian and Spanish leagues, preceded the opening of a new stadium. This stadium provided the financial means for Bayern to retain players and expand the squad, as compared to Borussia Mönchengladbach, contributing to the team's standing in national and European competitions.
When Spain in 1973 re-opened its borders to foreign talent, the equivalent of a €1.5 million offer for Gerd Müller from Barcelona was fended off, and Barça had to make do with Dutchman Johan Cruyff. On the other hand, Bayern's national rivals from the Rhine, Mönchengladbach, relinquished superstar Günter Netzer to Real Madrid. Soon thereafter, Bayern could also hire the services of Jupp Kapellmann from 1. FC Köln for the then-national record transfer fee of almost €400,000.
In the year 1972 Bayern won the record breaking league title and emerged as a top European club. Six players from Bayern were part of the West Germany national team that won the European Championship. They defended their title the following year by finishing well ahead of their rivals and became the top German football club.
The third championship in 1974 coincided with Bayern also becoming the first German team to win the European Cup. In the last minute of extra time in the Heysel Stadium, full back Georg Schwarzenbeck surprised everyone when he scored an equaliser against Atlético Madrid from 35 metres. The first-ever replay of a European Cup final two days later saw two goals each from Uli Hoeneß and Gerd Müller, comfortably winning Bayern the Cup.