Some numbers for you. When Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund meet in the Champions League Final on May 25th it will be the first all-German one-off European Final; the first all-German European encounter since Werder Bremen met Hamburg in the 2009 Europa League; the second meeting in Europe of this year’s finalists; the second all-German European Final; the sixth German opponent Bayern has faced in Europe and the seventeenth all-German meeting in the history of European club competition.
In the first of a regular series called Versus, we’ve compiled all Germany v Germany results from the dozen Bundesliga teams who have met in European competition since 1972, excluding teams from the former GDR. The aim was to see which team has the best inter-German record – the Bundesliga’s internenmeister if you like. It’s one of those rare tables that Bayern Munich don’t top and aside from Dortmund who have not played enough games to be representative, Borussia Mönchengladbach are the undisputed top dogs. A special mention for Eintracht Frankfurt who are the only German side to have won all inter-German encounters.
If you are of a philatelic persuasion then you might be interested in the current 
Charles was born in South Wales and joined the boys-section of his local club Swansea Town upon leaving school at the age of 14. Scouted by Leeds United, his potential impressed the Yorkshire club and he signed for them on his 17th birthday in 1948. Within a year he would make his first-team debut at centre-half and put in a performance of great maturity. There were no nerves, there were no mistakes – this was a player who appeared to arrive in the game fully formed. In 1952 his manager Frank Buckley boldly switched him to centre-forward and he adapted to this new role in his typically effortless style. His 29 goals fired Leeds to promotion to Division One in 1956 and in his debut top-flight season he did even better with 38, the step-up in quality not hindering him in the slightest.
While the West German champions of the late 70s couldn’t quite match the English in the European Cup, the sheer strength in depth of the Bundesliga did lend itself to a virtual monopoly over the UEFA Cup. Three of the four semi-final places in the 1978/79 tournament were taken by German clubs with Borussia Mönchengladbach going on to win it for the second time in just four seasons. The German stranglehold on the competition would grow tighter still in the 1979/80 tournament. The holders progressed comfortably to the Quarter-Finals as did all four of the other Bundesliga entrants – Bayern Munich, Eintracht Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern and Stuttgart. It was an unprecedented feat to have five participants from one country in the last-eight of the UEFA Cup, especially as no nation had even fielded five entrants in the competition before – West Germany were given a fifth place only because Albania did not take up its allocation.
In the broader scheme of things, a barrage of rotten fruit and vegetables is not the worst welcome a national squad can face upon return from a disastrous World Cup tournament. The 1966 Italian squad famously suffered this indignity at Genoa airport, an angry crowd throwing ripe insults and overripe produce at their lazy, greedy and vainglorious players. No-one would have thought to label the group as unpatriotic or ideologically unsound though, and certainly no-one would have started an insidious persecution campaign against them as a punishment. After a disappointing tournament of their own four years later in Mexico, this was the sinister welcome Bulgaria’s players and coaching staff faced on their return to Sofia.
After winning an Olympic silver medal two years earlier in Mexico City, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) had high hopes for the national team’s World Cup prospects in Mexico ’70. Olympic football was a sham though, dominated by eastern European nations through their generous interpretation of amateurism, and as a tournament it was no guide to World Cup form at all.
BTLM was thrilled to learn that Helenio Herrera released a record called the ’Herrera cha-cha-chá‘ in his early managerial days in Italy. Tactician, icon, legend and now song and dance man too – was there no end to the great man’s talents? This one is a conceptually tricky idea to grasp though: Herrera’s stern, authoritarian demeanour didn’t readily suggest he could easily slip into loose-limbed crooner mode when he wanted a break from the daily grind of winning European Cups and bellowing mantras about sound defending loudly in the faces of his players.
A little while ago we took an affectionate look back 
Eric’s first ever World XI was a real veterans team featuring seven players over the age of 30 and an average age higher than any future World XI. There was no argument with the selection of Puskas and Di Stefano in this, or a number of subsequent years, however some players like Hungarian keeper, Grosics, and full-backs, Bergmark and Nilton Santos, were past their best and their nomination perhaps reflected more their outstanding contributions to the game, rather than necessarily recent form.
With the World Cup 2014 qualifying campaign well underway, Belgium is attracting a lot of attention thanks to the emergence of a new generation of highly promising and expensively traded young players. The Belgians have had a second-rate national team since the mid-1990s, but with talent of the calibre of Eden Hazard, Axel Witsel, Vincent Kompany, Thomas Vermaelen, Moussa Dembélé and Romelu Lukaku available nowadays to trainer George Leekens, supporters can now realistically dream of a return to the nation’s successful 70s and 80s heyday.
After the war, Kreitlein returned to work in Stuttgart as a tailor and played part-time with his local club until a knee injury ended his career in 1951. Determined to stay in the game in some capacity, he turned once again to refereeing. It was very much a part-time hobby for him, yet by the time of the inception of the Bundesliga in 1963, his reputation was strong enough to gain a nomination as a national referee.
