Potsdam reach European summit

With the second qualifying round of the UEFA Women's Cup starting in mid-September, uefa.com is taking a detailed look at each of the 16 clubs looking to progress to the quarter-finals and beyond. Today, the top seeds in Group C and 2005 champions 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam.

More than 30 years after their foundation, 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam can be mentioned in the same breath as the two Frankfurt sides - 1. FFC and FSV - who have dominated women's football in recent times.

Club founded
In March 1971, in what was East Germany, the football department of the Betriebssportgemeinschaft Turbine Potsdam decided to launch a separate section for women's football. The new arrangement was one of 16 sports departments of BSG Turbine Potsdam, which had 2000 members overall, and comprised of a first team and a youth side.

Schröder mainstay
Bernd Schröder continues to play a major role within the club having been present since Turbine's inception. He helped BSG Turbine Potsdam to grow quickly into a competitive outfit and the club won six league titles in the GDR during the 1980s, before the reunification of Germany brought huge changes.

New name
The club adopted the name SSV Turbine Potsdam and became a member of the German Football Association (DFB). Again, Schröder managed to establish a women's football department with 60 to 70 members to run two senior and two junior teams within the larger club structure.

Developing structures
However, the new arrangement brought financial problems. Schröder explained: "We wanted to improve our structures in order to get our own sponsors for women's football, but the club did not focus on us". The women's football department duly separated from the rest of the club and 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam came into being on 1 September 1999.

Crucial partnerships
In co-operation with a sport-focused Potsdam high school and the DFB, a project was started to bring up to ten talented girls to Turbine every year. "If we had not come up with this idea, we would have had big problems with the quality and quantity of our players," Schröder said.

Hard work rewarded
Today the club has almost 200 members and is becoming increasingly professional. After years in the shadow of the two Frankfurt giants, Turbine have finally managed to develop into an ambitious and impressive club with hard work and innovative ideas. Nine current German internationals play for Potsdam, who are still coached by Schröder.

On top of Europe
In the new millennium, Turbine have added more silverware to their six East German championships. In 2004, they collected the Bundesliga and the German Cup trophies, and just 12 months later scooped the UEFA Women's Cup with a 5-1 aggregate win against Swedish side Djurgarden/Älvsjö. But although the next season brought another German double, they lost the Women's Cup final 7-2 on aggregate to Frankfurt.