Before Chelsea won the Champions League with a huge slice of fortune, one statistic was always bandied about. No teams from the biggest capital cities in Europe had ever won Europe’s premier club competition.
Chelsea ended London’s hoodoo, six years after Arsenal came closest. Roma were finalists in 1984, while Parisian giants PSG will surely be in line to bring glory to the French capital with their vast riches within the next decade.
Moscow produced a winner in the UEFA Cup (now Europa League) when they beat Sporting Lisbon in the final in Portugal’s capital back in 2005.
Historical reasons explain why clubs from the Russian capital have yet to make a serious impact in the European Cup/Champions League but in the domestic league, clubs from Moscow have traditionally dominated until the recent rise of Zenit St Petersburg, Rubin Kazan and Anzhi Makhachkla.
Even Athens has had a European Cup finalist with Ajax thwarting Panathanaikos in 1971, while Galatasaray of Istanbul has won a UEFA Cup. Ankara might be Turkey’s actual capital but Istanbul is by far its most important city and the country’s ‘Big Three’ of Galatasaray, Besiktas and Fenerbahce all hail from Istanbul and have dominated the Turkish football landscape for most of its history.
But then there is Berlin. In this season’s Bundesliga, there is no club from the German capital. More than likely Hertha Berlin will be promoted to the top tier for 2013/14 but if there is a repeat of the 2009/10 and 2011/12 seasons, they will face a serious fight to remain in the top flight.
Cold War
Berlin, with its population of 3.5 million, has never produced a Bundesliga winning club. In fact, no club from Berlin has ever won the German Cup or DFB-Pokal.
That’s when you realize the lingering effect history can have on the footballing fortunes of individual cities and clubs.
World War II and the ensuing Cold War made sure that Berlin was hampered from the very beginning with the city in the crosshairs of the superpowers and literally split in two.
On the western side, Hertha Berlin was – and still is – the city’s biggest club. But on the other side of the wall, politics meant that Dynamo Berlin were quite a force in East Germany. But it was a malign force that helped them to success, as they were backed by the Stasi – the notorious secret police who moved the club from the city of Dresden in order to have a strong club side from the capital.
Dynamo won every East German championship from 1979 to 1988 thanks to blunt favouritism and dodgy refereeing which explains why they performed so poorly on the European stage.
Meanwhile Hertha were suffering problems of their own. Inaugural members of the Bundesliga in 1963, the Berliners were relegated in 1965 for trying to bribe players to play in Berlin at a time when many German players were reluctant to play in a city that was an island in a Soviet sea.
Worst season
The German football authorities still wanted to have a Berlin presence in the top flight, promoting Tasmania 1900 Berlin to the Bundesliga. But the Berlin minnows had the worst season in Bundesliga history, setting records such as the longest winless streak (31), most consecutive losses (10) and worst goal difference (minus 93).
Hertha returned to the Bundesliga by the end of the 60s and although the 70s were reasonably positive, the rest of the Cold War was one to forget as they spent most of the 80s and early 90s in the lower divisions.
Success has been limited since their Bundesliga return in 1997. Apart from becoming the first Berlin club to reach the Champions League group stages in 1999-00, they have been mediocre, culminating in relegations in 2010 and 2012.
Predictably after the reunification of Germany, Dynamo Berlin ended up in the lower divisions like most other East German clubs and that is where they have remained, languishing in the fifth tier.
So can a Berlin club become a force in German football? Currently there are two clubs from the capital in the second tier, where Union Berlin play alongside Hertha. Originally an East German outfit Union has never played in the Bundesliga, which leaves Hertha as the only real hope.
There is potential there in terms of acquiring a fanbase due to its hegemonic status within the city, while Hertha also plays in the 75,000 seater Olympic Stadium which hosted the 2006 World Cup final.
But the structure of German club ownership means that a PSG or Manchester City-style takeover is impossible which means a long-term approach must be taken which makes the chances of success for Berlin quite slim indeed in the near future.
