Helmut Schön's Sons - Dresdner SC

[Reiver]

The Viktoria trophy, pictured here, was the original trophy given to the German's champions, starting in 1903, with VfB Leipzig, now Lok Leipzig taking the trophy home the first year. This game is not about the first winners of this cup, but the last - and no, you won't see me touch Bayern Munich with a ten foot pole. In the last stages of WWII the trophy disappeared and was presumed lost for around 45 years. Turns out one of the supporters of the last pre-German split champions had managed to get their hands on the trophy and hid it in a safe deposit box for the whole time East Germany existed and returned after the reunification - the new German champions receive a replacement trophy, the Meisterschale (Champion's Bowl, colloquially know as the Salatschüssel, the Salad Bowl). And now we jump a bit back in time to follow the story of this team.

Dresden, 1873. A group of English and Americans living in the city start a sports club, the Dresden Football Club (also known as the Dresden English Football Club) in order to play rugby and association club - there's some doubts as to when they actually started playing football, but there's a chance that they were the first team outside of Great Britain to play by the FA rules. They played in the Ostragehege park, where football has been played to this day - it's where you can find the Heinz-Steyer-Stadion, where our team now plays and where Dynamo Dresden also played until they got their own stadium in the 50s.

Former members of this club formed in 1893 Neue Dresdner FC, and former members of both these clubs formed Dresdner Sportclub 1898, Dresdner SC for short. At the time, German football was split into regional leagues and then national playoffs, and Dresdner quickly took their spot as the strongest team from Dresden and one of the best from Saxony and Thuringia, winning the Mitteldeutsche Fußball Meisterschaft, the central Germany football championship, 6 times and being the runner-ups 5 times more, and reaching the national semi-finals twice. But the team's heyday would come in the 30s and 40s. Captained by later West Germany's manager Helmut Schön (who played for the club from 1932-1950), Dresdner would dominate regionally, winning the Gauliga Sachsen 6 times out of the eleven seasons it ran, and being runner-ups 3 more times. During this time they also won the German cup in 1941 and 1942, and the German National Championship in 1943 and 1944. Because of the end of the war and the first years of post war, no organized football was played from 1945 to 47.

After WWII, that's where the history of the club gets muddy and dark.

The allied forces disbanded all existing organisations in an attempt to denazify the country. The club was reformed in early 1946 in the Soviet controlled area as SG Friedrichstadt, after the neighbourhood of Dresden the club hailed from. This club was short-lived though. One game before the end of the 1949/50 season, the first football season in East Germany, SG Friedrichstadt lead the table with the same points as soviet sponsored Horch Zwickau, and the teams would play eachother in Dresden, in a game known as "Skandalspiels", the scandal game. 60000 thousand people saw a game where the Zwickau players played a very aggressive game without any repercussions and the referee refused Dresdner's substitutions - the team would eventually end the game with just 8 players and lost 5-1. There were field invasions during the game, and riots at the end of the game, with some Zwickau players being badly beaten. and mounted police had to intervene to restore order. The clube was then deemed too "bourgeois" and dismantled.

The communist regime's instructions was for the players to be incorporated into BSG Empor Tabak Dresden which would take the place of the now defunct club in the league. However, most of the team ended up fleeing the country all together, with 11 players joining Helmut Schön to Hertha Berlin, and 7 others to a lower league team in West Germany, TSG Heidelberg; in the end the place in the league was taken by SG Volkspolizei Dresden, who would go to become Dynamo Dresden.

The rest of the team's structure and youth setup joined SG Mickten (from the neighbouring area of Dresden) after they lost most players to Volkspolizei Dresden. SG Mickten went through a series of mergers and name changes throughout its years in East Germany, depending on who sponsored the team. From 1950 to 1954 it was known as BSG Rotation Dresden, and then as BSG Einheit Dresden until 1966. The team was a midtable top tier division at this point, and even won the East German cup in 1958. In 1966, the football department of Einheit became independent as FSV Locomotive Dresden, but with Dynamo Dresden now being a top team and getting all the best players from the region, they never managed to reach their previous level, and while they fought for promotion more than once, they were a second division team until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After the reunification, the team changed their name back to Dresdner SC and played in the local leagues. They managed to play in the 3rd tier from 1992 to 1994 and then again from 1998-2003 - they managed a second place in the Regionalliga in 1999/2000 and for a few years managed to actually be the highest rated team from Dresden as Dynamo was at their lowest in the 4th tier. Then money problems hit, the team went bankrupt and has gone back to playing in the lower leagues of German football.

Now, I started this save game after a few failed attempts at starting a new save, including a South American Journeyman, a C&C with Cape Verde (until I realised that no teams qualified for the continental cups). Then I decided to have a go at a common challenge where you take over a promoted team to the lowest league after holidaying for a year (except I did it in Germany instead of England). Loaded up the top 6 tiers, holidayed a season and was presented with Dresdner SC. I already had my brain set on going for a former East German team and when they got promoted I thought it was perfect. Dresden is the biggest city in Germany without a top flight team, is a beautiful city, and has the weirdest dichotomy of being the stronghold of right-wing in Germany while still having a big left wing movement, and while the right wing hooligans flock to Dynamo, Dresdner SC has a small but vocal left wing following a la St. Pauli. The rivalry with Dynamo is big, and I have it as my first goal to be better than Dynamo.

[richruzzian]

Interesting. In which league do you start? Seems to be a nice chaklenge to overtop Dynamo. Dynamo Dresden used to be a big club if can recall correct in the Former DDR

[Reiver]

So, what happened in the year we holidayed through? Let's start with the international competitions. the Euro was won by France, who beat Spain in the final, Umtiti scoring the only goal 40 seconds into the game. Norway and Denmark were the surprise teams, reaching the semifinals. Cristiano Ronaldo did get one more international title, as Juventus won the Champions League against Man City, where the Europa League trophy was lifted by their crosstown rivals against Borussia Mönchengladbach. Man City also won the English title, and in France it was also unsurpisingly PSG that lifted the trophy; Juventus did it in Italy, and Benfica (special note in Portugal for Sporting's meltdown, as they finish 7th!), and in spain it was Barcelona's turn. In Germany it was also Bayern's title.

What league did Dresdner SC get promoted into? The Sachsenliga,  the highest league in the state of Saxony, abd in the 6th tier of German football. Our climb up the leagues, should it happen, will see us go up to the Oberliga Nordost Süd - yes, the Northeast South League - playing against team from Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, then m the Regionalliga Nordost in the 4th tier, playing against team from all of East Germany and Berlin; above this level you'll be more familiar with the names: 3.Liga, 2.Bundesliga and Bundesliga.

And just how do we fare? Well we play in the 23767 people Heinz-Steyer-Stadion, built in 1919, and we have basic facilities all around. We are semi-professional, and despite only starting with a 14 men squad, the bookies say we are one of the favourites to go up - the board expects us to finish in the top two of the league, and to reach the second round of the Sachsenpokal, the regional cup for teams in the 3.Liga and lower. We were offered a wage budget of 15.5k€ per month.

[chaodck]

Loved the initial post Reiver, it's always a joy to learn about clubs and their past with your saves. Good luck with this save mate, I'll be following.

[jawzy]

Reiver, I too always love the initial posts, but its a shame nothing seems to stick for you

[Reiver]

It's December 2020, and we're off to our deserved winter break, but not before showing how we fared so far. Like mentioned, we started the game with just 14 players in the whole squad. What I did not mention is that i took over the team just 3 weeks before the first game of the season, so there was no time to carefully plan any signing - it was mostly based on offering trials to players that offered themselves to us, and asking each person coming in to recommend signings and scouting them specifically. It got to the point where a player was signing a contract with us at 9 in the morning to then play their first game for us the very same day in the afternoon.

It's not like you'll recognise any of the names, but here's the full list of signings. i won't bother showing you all of them, I'll just mention the one that seem to be the biggest name for us:

Helge Huber, our first choice striker comes from Erfurt. Traditionally a 3rd tier team, Erfurt has fallen on hard teams on the pitch and got relegated twice in the last three years (and are on another relegation battle at this point). Huber was available on a free after a dismal last season with Erfurt but I saw something in him and decided to take a gamble on a striker that had 2 goals in 34 games last season. Considering he's already scored 12 this season, I think it was a good gamble.

At the other hand, Moritz Butzke showed a lot of promise, a very decent playmaker that had been released by Lok Leipzig. Except he's spent 55% of the season so far injured - first with "Multiple Torn Knee Ligaments" and then with a sprained anterior cruciate ligament. I'm starting to fear his career will be over just as it's starting.

Tactically, we're playing the way I've always found success at the bottom. Teams at this low a level will always commit errors, so we play so we can capitalise and force the opponents to make mistakes as close to their goal as possible, so we just press press press. And has it worked?

It's been a walk in the park - I think the real challenge will start next season. I'm not even as dominating as last season where Bautzen finished the season with only two draws and 24 points ahead of second place, but I'll probably be close to that. 

Wve already done what the board expected of us - even beating Hohenstein from the tier above us on the way. But, I believe the next round will most likely be our last. It's one thing beating a team one division above, but going against a professional team 3 division above is quite another:

I'm sorry for the quick and a bit rushed format of the post, but I had to squeeze this quickly as I am breezing through a game for the very first time in a long time and don't want to lose the momentum!

[Reiver]

Holy crap holy crap holy crap!

[Reiver]

I always expected the first season to be easy. Despite having just been promoted, we're a "big" name at local level and our reputation allowed us to build a team that could challenge for a double promotion. By the midseason, I could dream higher and hope for a defeat free season. During the winter transfer season we got rid of some deadweight to make the wage budget lighter, and hired a new first choice keeper in Tom Schmidt, formed at Werder Bremen and with a career in the lower leagues at Hertha, Bielefeld and Hannover's B teams then Berliner AK, Viktoria Berlin and Sparta Lichtenberg, all local Berlin teams.

We did it in style, and we managed to do it without any defeat indeed - still, Bautzen did the same the previous year with 10 more points than us this season somehow! The architect of this has to be Helge Huber. The striker came from a dreadful season at Erfurt with just 2 goals in 34 games, to a magnificent 19 goals in 25 games for us this season - second best goalscorer of the league and also second highest average rating. Michael Caspari and his 11 assists from the wing deserve special mention too.

If at the beginning of the save anyone had said I'd have a cup run in the first season I would have laughed out loud - the regional cup sees teams from Sachsen from the 3.Liga down (meaning 3 tiers above us) fighting for the cup and the place in next year's DFB-Pokal it brings. But then... the quarter finals of the competition saw us play against  3.Liga Chemnitz. While the final stats of 7 shots for us against 14 for then, truth is that we managed to play head to head against them in the first half, and our playmaker scored the only goal of the game just before half time. They went at us all out in the second half but we stood our ground and qualified for the semi-finals.

The draw gave us another 3.Liga team for the semifinals, with Zwickau visiting us. This time we weren't able to play head to head against them for any period of time, our 7 shots going against 27 on their side.we even played 55 minutes with 10 players. But my guys gave me two presents - 26 minutes in in a through ball in a counter attack, and once again our playmaker, 46 minutes in, when we were already down to 10 (without a striker and him actually playing as a shadow striker), shooting from outside of the area. Somehow we withstood their attacking flood and were through to the final!

The final, last game in the season, played in the Ilburg-Stadion in Eilenburg had a full house of 5600 to watch us play Lok Leipzig. They played 2 divisions above us in the Regionalliga and were fighting for promotion. We were already promoted, so we managed to rest our players in the week before, the last league game, and we had a 10% condition advantage on them on average. We fought hard, and took the game to extra-time, but a header from a free kick near the midfield killed our hopes 107 minutes in. No national cup for us next year (which would be fun but we'd get decimated) but it was a fun "giant-killing" spree.

Finantially wise, we're... not very good. The team lost 137k€ this season, and we're currently on negative 90k€. This will only get worst until it gets better - either because someone new enters and invests in us, or we go high enough to start making a profit - thought at some point this will start being an anchor preventing us from going up as fast as we want (or at all). Well, here's to a new league - next year we'll be in the Oberliga, the fifth tier!

[jla]

Great club choice Reiver and excellent first season. Interesting to see Markranstadt in the same league, thought it was Markranstadt that Red Bull took over? Love the German lower leagues so will keep up!

[Reiver]

Jul 29, 2020 11:07:14 GMT jla said:

Great club choice Reiver and excellent first season. Interesting to see Markranstadt in the same league, thought it was Markranstadt that Red Bull took over? Love the German lower leagues so will keep up!

Thanks! It was indeed, though I believe when that happened, RB took the spot of Markraanstadt and they had to continue from where their B team was a few leagues below.

[Reiver]

And so we move into the third season of the game, second of our reign at Dresdner SC - this time in the Oberliga Nordost Süd, 5th tier in Germany, which covers Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Before discussing anything else I'd like to show you a picture of Dresdner SC's chairman:

See this guy here? He's as stupid as doorknobs. At the beginning of the season I was asked if I wanted to start a B team. I thought to myself that it couldn't hurt, if we establish one early, it means that when i really want one at a higher level, it has already existed for a few years and has had a few chances of going up.  The chairman goes and creates the team, and then spends 300k€ building a brand new 104 people capacity football field for our B team! Is our 25k people main stadium no good for the B team? Seriously, this will bankrupt us before we get a chance to go up. He didn't even ask for a loan, he just opened a 300k€ hole in the club's bank account, that was already nearly 100k€ in the red and losing 10k€ to 25k€ per month. I bet he got an MBA through a mail-order catalogue.

I digress. Going back to the world at the end of the 2020/21 season: Man City won their 4th league title in a row, and they did the treble, bringing home both major cups too. In Spain it was Real Madrid's turn to get the title, with Barcelona getting the Spanish Cup. In Italy, Juventus celebrated 10 in a row, and also won the cup. In the Bundesliga, jaws were dropped as it was not Bayern that won the league - Dortmund got a title 9 years later! Mainz won the cup. In France it was PSG all over the place too. In Europe, Liverpool won the Champions League beating Atletico Madrid with a goal from Cavani in the second minute of stoppage time - PSG went down to the Europa League after finishing 3rd in a group with Molde, Napoli and Real Madrid. They would not win the Europa League either, Köln suprisingly beat Chelsea in the final, after taking the game to penalties.

Back to Germany, and back to the lower leagues. After all the transfer movements at the start of the season, we were predicted to finish 14th out of 16 - our board is asking us to not get relegated. We believe we can do mid table. The board is also asking to play high pressing and attacking football - considering that's already how we play most games, no problemo. They also want to sign under 23 players for the first team.

And who did we sign? A bunch of nobodies you never heard of!

Obst, while not being amazing, even for this level, is a decent enough option for us on the left flank and joins us after being formed at Hertha and enjoying a career in lower league teams in Berlin. Williams will be our new first choice keeper (much to the disappointment of Schmidt, who ended up being first choice for 6 months) - Williams spent all of his small career at Viktoria Berlin. Garling is the star of this year's transfer deals: an 18 year old from Lok Leipzig with bags of potential. Fassnacht has 11 games at 3rd tier level (2 years ago) at Jena, so it's also a coup. Nattermann, the man with the stache, has played for RB Leipzig when they were still climbing the leagues, then Aue, Jena and Cottbus, and Itter comes from Chemnitz.

Going out, just a couple: Geraldino and Fritzch were surplus.

[chaodck]

Fuck me Reiver, that innecesary spending by the Board is just a shot in the ballsack. Good luck in the season mate.

[Marshdweller]

I didn't even know it was possible for the board to build a B team stadium. Madness!

[Reiver]

I bet some of you wer expecting this from me The save is over. i actually played through two season's throughout the week while "working from home" - it gives me enough small breaks to keep attention to the game but not enough to do a big write up, so i save the game regularly to post an update every 6 months or so ingame, but it got to the point where I can't go through anymore. I did get promoted in this season, and finished midtable the following season, but the high debts caught up to us. The club is over 2M€ in debt, and losing 50k to 100k every month, despite me never being overbudget. The chairman is still showing no signs of wanting to leave, and no investors came knocking, No loan was ever taken to face the debt (though to be fair I'm not sure it would have made it any better) - and the budget I was given for next season is just not feasible. i can't work with having 325€ a month as the maximum wages i can offer when my current squad are all getting 1k to 2k a month. I can't renew contracts or get replacements. Dresdner SC is dead, long live Dresdner SC.

[Marshdweller]

I'm sorry to hear that - torpedoed by the B team stadium?

[Reiver]

It did make it happen earlier than it woud have, probably made this come one season earlier than otherwise - but considering the way things were going, I'd be making money and getting out of the hole once I got to the second tier, and i was at best 4 or 5 seasons away from that.

[chaodck]

Shame to hear about this Reiver, here's hoping you find another save mate.