Borussia Dortmund are responsible for bizarre season which saw 12 Bundesliga teams qualify for Europe

Borussia Dortmund are responsible for a bizarre season that saw 12 Bundesliga teams qualify for Europe.

The quarter-finals of the Champions League have sparked much conversation about the race between the Premier League and Bundesliga regarding which league will be rewarded with an extra Champions League place.

In the reformatted edition of next season's Champions League, the two countries with the highest co-efficient will be given an extra group-stage place.

With Italy already comfortably top of the co-efficiency standings ahead of the quarter finals of this year’s European competition, England and Germany are neck and neck in the fight to claim the second bonus Champions League spot.

And talk of extra European spots has sparked memories of the 1997 Bundesliga season, courtesy of Manuel Veth on X.

That year Dortmund won the Champions League, while Schalke claimed the UEFA Cup. This meant that some 12 of the 18 Bundesliga teams qualified to play in a European competition the following season.

Champions League qualifying for second spot was newly introduced that season, which meant that both Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich and runners up Bayer Levekusen earned a place in Europe’s premier competition.

However, third placed Dortmund also qualified for the next season’s Champions League as the competition’s holders.

Meanwhile, fourth place Stuttgart qualified for the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup as domestic cup winners.

Dortmund won the Champions League in 1997 (Getty)

In turn, a domino effect was created, with the two UEFA Cup places Dortmund and Stuttgart earned for their final Bundesliga positions that season awarded to sixth placed Karlsruhe and seventh placed 1860 Munich, with fifth placed Bochum also qualifying through their league position.

Karlsruhe and 1860 Munich's Intertoto Cup berths were then passed down to Köln and, as Borrusia Monchengladbach did not apply for the competition, to 13th placed Hamburg.

Meanwhile, as winners of that season’s UEFA Cup, 12th placed Schalke qualified for the tournament the following season. That meant that two thirds of the Bundesliga’s teams played in Europe in the 1997/98 campaign.

Topics: Borussia Dortmund, Champions League, Bundesliga, Premier League, Football, Germany, England

Chris Byfield

Sport journalist with experience writing on football, rugby, boxing and the Olympics. I'm also a Crystal Palace fan. Please don't hold this against me.