Oldest football clubs
Dresden English Football Club was founded on 18 March 1874 and was the first association football club in Germany, and likely the first outside Great Britain. In 1874, over 70 members participated, primarily Englishmen working in Dresden, watched by hundreds of spectators. Another German club, 1860 Munich did not play football until 1899, although it has its origins in a gymnastics and fitness club formed in 1848 and reestablished in the year indicated by its name.
History of German football
Since the launch of the Bundesliga on 24 August 1963 fifty-five clubs have played in the league ranks. To help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the league, two clubs with distinguished Bundesliga histories met in a game on 24 August 2003: Hamburger SV, once known as the "dinosaur" for being the only club which has played in every season of the league's existence until relegation in 2018, and Bayern Munich, the most successful side in German football, which had just won their seventeenth Bundesliga title.