How Magdeburg fell from European triumph to regional leagues to rekindle top-flight dreams
They beat AC Milan to win a European title and were leading lights of the former East German league. A disappointing 1990/91 season cost Magdeburg the chance of gaining a Bundesliga spot, a mistake they hope to rectify over 30 years later.
There was a lot more on the minds of citizens in the former East Germany in the summer of 1990 than football. Soldiers from the near-extinct state had begun dismantling the Berlin Wall as the process of reunification gathered pace.
In Magdeburg, 150 kilometres to the west of Berlin, there was good reason to be confident that local side Magdeburg would find a spot in the reunified German football pyramid they could be proud of.
The 14 teams of the DDR Oberliga were about to contest one final season - with the top two to gain entry to the Bundesliga the following campaign and third to sixth place going into Bundesliga 2. Magdeburg, who finished the 1989/90 season in third, two points behind champions Dynamo Dresden, were rightly setting their sights high.
They were a club with real European pedigree, after all. Although narrowly beaten by Bordeaux in the second round of the 1990/91 UEFA Cup, Magdeburg had seen off Schalke in the 1977/78 edition of the tournament and most notably lifted the Cup Winners' Cup in 1974 with a 2-0 victory over AC Milan in the final.
That remarkable success came amid a heyday for the club in the 1970s in which they were East German champions three times in four seasons and runners-up twice later in the decade. Their sides of the era included the likes of Jürgen Sparwasser - who scored the winning goal for East Germany against West Germany in the 1974 World Cup - and Joachim Streich - who holds the records for both caps and goals for East Germany.
Magdeburg also count the joint-most East German cup wins in history - seven.
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Things did not work out planned in the decisive 1990/91 season, however. With Streich leaving as a manager after five years to join Eintracht Braunschweig and some key players also heading west, Magdeburg fell to 10th. Instead of being propelled into the Bundesliga like table-topping Hansa Rostock and second-placed Dresden, Magdeburg would contest a play-off for two remaining Bundesliga 2 spots, in which they finished bottom of a group of four clubs.
The Blue and Whites had to contend themselves with regional level amateur football in the reunified pyramid. Efforts to climb into the top two tiers in the 1990s failed, leaving the club to face insolvency in 2002 and relegation to a fourth-tier league. They would play at that level for over a decade - asides from two seasons in a third-tier regional league - until gaining promotion in 2015 to the recently formed national third division under Jens Härtel.
Härtel's side ambitiously chased promotion again - and after two fourth-placed finishes, were top of the pack in 2017/18 to move up to Bundesliga 2 for the first time. A difficult first season in the second tier saw Magdeburg finish 17th as they were relegated, with Härtel and then star striker Marius Bülter departing along the way.
Two seasons in which Magdeburg had to stave off the danger of relegation to the fourth division ensued before former Hamburg and Rot-Weiss Essen coach Christian Titz took charge in February 2021. Titz turned around their fortunes and led them back into the second tier in his first full season, 2021/22, with Sirlord Conteh one of their standout performers.
Magdeburg secured their best finish in 2022/23 - 11th - and ended up with a six point-buffer on the relegation zone the following campaign, ranking 14th out of 18 teams. Eight games into the new season, they're riding high in second place, unbeaten after eight games, with four wins and four draws to their name.
Thirty-four years after missing the cut, club CEO Martin Geisthardt believes Bundesliga promotion is an acheivable aim one again: "I think examples like Fürth, Darmstadt and Kiel are amazing at showing that locations that don't have the same kind of economic clout as Hamburg, Cologne or [Hertha] Berlin can take this step. If the stars align, I imagine Mattersburg could also take this step."
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