The history of German football is one that has seen many changes.
Football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...
was a popular game from early on, and the German sports landscape was dotted with hundreds of local sides. Local sports associations or clubs are a longtime feature of the culture of German athletics. Each club would participate in, and field teams from, one or more sports, depending on local interest and resources.
Early history
Prior to the formation of the
Bundesliga
The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footb ...
, German football was played at an amateur level in a large number of sub-regional leagues (until 1945) which, in post-war times, had a top layer of semi-professional regional
Oberligen (''Premier Leagues''). Regional champions and, from 1925 onwards, runners-up played a series of playoff matches for the right to compete in a final game for the national championship. On 28 January 1900, a national association, the
Deutscher Fussball-Bund
The German Football Association (german: Deutscher Fußball-Bund ; DFB ) is the governing body of Association football, football in Germany. A founding member of both FIFA and UEFA, the DFB has jurisdiction for the German football league system ...
(DFB) was founded in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
with
86 member clubs. From the start, the DFB was – and still is – a federation of regional associations. The first recognised national championship team was