Underdog Stories / Football history

History of Turbine Potsdam: East Germany to European Champions

The history of Turbine Potsdam women's football club runs from a mystery notice in East Germany to a 2010 Champions League shootout win over Lyon.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 20, 2026

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On New Year's Eve 1970, a man named Bernd Schröder stopped at the bulletin board of the state energy company in Potsdam and read a notice. A women's football team, it said, would be formed in March. Nobody ever worked out who put it there.

The history of Turbine Potsdam women's football club starts with that notice. The club was founded in 1971 inside an East German energy company and became independent in 1999. It won Europe in 2005 and again in 2010. Now it fights in Germany's second tier. It is also one of the few major women's clubs with no men's side behind it.

How did Turbine Potsdam start?

Schröder went to the meeting on 3 March 1971 expecting to do some paperwork. One blog says he was only there for dinner. That sounds right to me, and I can't confirm it. He came out as the coach, and he managed the women's side from 1971 to 2016, with a gap in the 1990s.

The team belonged to BSG Turbine Potsdam, a works sports club backed by the energy utility. In East Germany that meant the company paid. Schröder became a senior employee, which let him offer new players jobs and flats, and he used that to recruit former track and field athletes whom other clubs had dropped.

The first match was on 25 May 1971, away at Empor Tangermünde, and Turbine won 3–0. They won the district championship a year later.

Why couldn't East German women's teams play abroad?

Women's football in the GDR wasn't banned. It was ignored, which was nearly as useful to the authorities. Horwedel says there was no official national team and no proper national league. The first unofficial championship came in 1979. Turbine took six titles, in 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1989.

Winning brought invitations, and invitations brought problems. Travel to the West was tightly controlled. A tournament in a friendly communist country could still be refused if Western clubs were playing.

The episode's version of the Hungary story goes like this. A tournament included Western European teams, and Schröder reportedly persuaded the organisers to disguise the guest list so officials would approve the trip. The trick was found out. He got an international ban, and the club's chances to travel shrank further. Horwedel says "reportedly", and so should anyone retelling it.

A different summary of the club's history puts a similar stunt at a tournament in Poland. Schröder changed the list himself, and a party member came along to try to stop the Western teams playing. The compromise was a friendly against the home side. After that, the club was banned from leaving East Germany for a long time. Hungary or Poland, one trick or two, I couldn't find a primary document. The pattern is the same in both. The club kept asking for more than it was allowed.

One more detail. Schröder coached the East German women's national team in the only game it ever played, a 3–0 loss to Czechoslovakia in Potsdam on 9 May 1990. The country got round to having a women's team about six months before it stopped existing.

What happened to Turbine Potsdam after reunification?

The Wall came down and took the club's support with it. The energy company's backing faded. East German teams entered a football structure where the money and the leagues were in the West. Many male players from the GDR moved to West German clubs, but most of the women stayed in the East.

In 1991 Turbine finished third and missed the Bundesliga. Money was so short that officials weren't sure they could pay for away trips, and many players lost their jobs. Survival mattered more than Europe.

Schröder stepped back after the 1991/92 season. He returned to the bench in late 1997. The independent 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam was founded on 1 April 1999.

“The women aren't the side project. They are the club.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

I'd call that independence a gamble more than a triumph, and the episode agrees. If the women's team failed, there was no men's department to absorb the damage. Nobody was going to catch them. So the club built the slow way, through scouting and through coaching young players, because it couldn't buy anything else.

How did Turbine Potsdam beat Frankfurt and win Europe in 2005?

The rival was 1. FFC Frankfurt, the dominant German club of the time. In 1999 Frankfurt led 4-0 at half-time, and Potsdam came back to draw 4-4. It won nothing, but it told everyone something.

Five years later, the title was decided on the last day, in Frankfurt. Turbine led by a point. A crowd of 4,800 watched them win 7-2, their first post-reunification championship. They became the first team from the former GDR to win a top-flight title in the unified country, in men's or women's football. They had already won the cup. The line-up had Nadine Angerer, Ariane Hingst, Viola Odebrecht and Conny Pohlers, who the episode says scored more than 200 Bundesliga goals.

The league title put them into the UEFA Women's Cup. They won it on their international debut, with eight wins and a draw. They won 2-0 in Stockholm against Djurgården/Älvsjö. Early goals from Pohlers and Petra Wimbersky helped win the return 3-1, in front of 8,700 people, the biggest crowd ever at a Turbine home game. The aggregate was 5-1.

A club that started as a note on a bulletin board was the best women's team in Europe.

How did Turbine Potsdam win the 2010 Champions League final?

The final was played in Getafe, Spain, on 20 May 2010, and it was the first under the Champions League name. The opponent was Lyon. After 120 goalless minutes, 10,372 people watched a shootout that ended when Lyon's Élodie Thomis hit the crossbar with the 18th penalty. Potsdam won 7-6.

The goalkeeper was Anna Felicitas Sarholz, who was 17. In the semi-final she had already saved three penalties against Duisburg. She said she had studied where Lyon's players aimed with her goalkeeping coach. In the final she saved two more, then took a kick herself and scored. The taking part is my favourite bit. She told UEFA, "I offered to take one and the team ignored me at first." They gave in.

It was the high point of a good stretch. Turbine won a fourth straight Bundesliga title in 2011/12, the first team to do so. Lyon won the rematch the next year and started a dynasty. For one night in Getafe, nobody was ahead of Potsdam.

Why does the history of Turbine Potsdam women's football club still matter?

Because the romantic version of this story has a hard second half. Schröder retired in 2016. The episode calls him demanding, abrasive and controlling, and says his methods came from an older football culture. It also says he insisted women's football deserved professional standards. Both things are true.

Then the big men's clubs started spending. Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg built medical, financial and commercial muscle that an independent club couldn't match. Frankfurt's historic women's side was eventually absorbed into Eintracht Frankfurt.

In May 2023, after a 1-5 loss to Leverkusen, Turbine were relegated for the first time in 29 years in the Bundesliga. The episode says they began the second-tier season with three defeats and no goals. Then they won seven straight and went back up on the last day, beating Ingolstadt 2-1. The next season in the top flight brought one point and another relegation.

It hasn't been smooth since. In May 2026 they were still three points clear of the drop in the 2. Bundesliga, and they had failed to score in eight matches that season. Horwedel says they finished ninth. The aim now is a Bundesliga return that lasts.

What Turbine proved still stands. A women's club can be the main event. It can grow its own players, fans and rivalries, and win Europe without a famous men's badge. They remain the only team from the former East to have won the unified top league. For the episode, listen to Chris Horwedel's "1. FFC Turbine Potsdam: The Women's Club That Refused to Stay Home" on Why We Love This Club.

The home ground is the Karl-Liebknecht-Stadion, shared with the men of SV Babelsberg 03, a compact old-fashioned place that holds about 10,000. The fixture list has Andernach visiting on Sunday at 2 p.m. Nobody needs a permit to get in.