The Britain-Dresden Football Connection

Dresden has long been a focal point of British-German cultural transfers of almost any sort.

For instance in 1874, English people living in Dresden founded what was the first official football club in Germany and indeed the first outside Great Britain. The pitch was at the Güntzwiesen, close to the Blüherpark, today’s Glücksgas Stadium.

The event was worth a brief report in highly reputed Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung. It referred to it as a “game in which the ball is propelled forward with the foot", and explained "some twenty young men in a costume, namely in different colours to distinguish them. A kind of woollen or silk underjacket, with or without sleeves, short-fitting leg coverings that show the bare knee, long stockings, [and] very comfortable shoes or lace-up boots make up the ensemble."

For anyone interested in the even finer details of this long-lasting ‘transfer’, see Hans-Peter Hock, Der Dresden Football Club und die Anfänge des Fußballs in Europa. Arete Verlag: Hildesheim 2016.

Written by Trustee Rüdiger Görner