Football
Germany's top level football league, known as the Bundesliga, has one of the highest average attendances of any professional sports league in the world. As of the 2010–11 season, the Bundesliga is placed third in UEFA rankings, which are based on the performance of clubs in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League.
Football in Germany is (like in most European countries) the number one assistance and practiced sport. Besides the national league, the Euro cup and the FIFA World Cup has much attention among its population.
Bayern Munich (German: Bayern München) is the most successful German football club, with 21 national championships, 14 National Cups and four European Champions titles (three European Cups and 1 Champions League) to its credit. Like many other German football clubs, Bayern Munich is a multi-sport club.
The German national football team is one of the traditional powers of international football. It won the FIFA World Cup in 1954, 1974 and 1990 and the European Football Championship in 1972 and 1980 as West Germany and in 1996 as Germany. Gerd Müller is the leading goal scorer for the national team with 68 goals, but his fame is perhaps eclipsed by that of Franz Beckenbauer who is one of the few men in the world who have won the World Cup both as a coach and a player. Germany also hosted the World Cup in 1974 and 2006, finishing third in 2006 after losing a close semi-final contest to eventual cup winners Italy.
The women's national team is also a world power, with its wins of the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2003 and 2007, making Germany the only nation to win both the men's and women's World Cup and European titles – a rarity for a nation where the center of attention is usually the men's game. Women have their own Bundesliga, but it is semi-professional and does not command the fan support the men's competitions do. Germany hosted the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Germany
Famous quotes containing the word football:
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)