VfB Stuttgart

Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V., commonly known as VfB Stuttgart (faʊ̯ɛfˈbeː ˈʃtʊtɡaʁt) or simply Stuttgart, is a German professional sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club's football team is currently part of Germany's first division, the Bundesliga. VfB Stuttgart has won the national championship five times, most recently in 2006–07, the DFB-Pokal three times and the UEFA Intertoto Cup a record three times. The football team plays its home games at the MHPArena, in the Neckarpark which is located near the Cannstatter Wasen, where the city's fall beer festival takes place. Second team side VfB Stuttgart II currently plays in the Regionalliga Südwest, which is the second highest division allowed for a reserve team. The club's junior teams have won the national U19 championships a record ten times and the Under 17 Bundesliga a record seven times. A membership-based club with over 72,000 members, VfB is the largest sports club in Baden-Württemberg and the eighth-largest football club in Germany. It has departments for fistball, field hockey, track and field, table tennis, and football referees, all of which compete only at the amateur level. The club also maintains a social department, the VfB-Garde. Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart was formed through a 2 April 1912 merger of predecessor sides Stuttgarter FV and FC Krone Cannstatt following a meeting in the Concordia hotel in Cannstatt. Each of these clubs was made up of school pupils with middle-class roots who learned new sports such as rugby union and football from English expatriates such as William Cail who introduced rugby in 1865. Stuttgarter Fußballverein was founded at the Zum Becher hotel in Stuttgart on 9 September 1893. FV were initially a rugby club, playing games at Stöckach-Eisbahn before moving to Cannstatter Wasen in 1894. The rugby club established a football section in 1908. The team drew players primarily from local schools, under the direction of teacher Carl Kaufmann, and quickly achieved its first success; in 1909, they were runners-up to FSV 1897 Hannover in the national rugby final, losing 6–3.