The German Football Association (Deutscher Fußball-Bund, DFB) is the governing body of football in Germany. A founding member of both FIFA and UEFA, the DFB organises the German football leagues, including the national league, the Bundesliga, and the men's and women's national teams. The DFB is based in Frankfurt and is divided into five regional federations with 21 regional organizations.
The DFB's history shows the meteoric rise of football to becoming a nation's most popular sport, a process in which the DFB not only became a sporting powerhouse, but also an authority of high importance from a socio-political point of view.
Professor Konrad Koch was a great pioneer for the sport which originated in England. There was no way to predict what football would turn into when he put the "Rules of Football" down on paper in 1874. Football in Germany did not have an easy start, branded as an "English disease" or similarly disturbing labels by the society. Gym teacher Karl Planck for example wrote in 1898 that the movement required in football made humans adopt a striking resemblance to monkeys.
For more than 100 years now, the DFB views itself as a responsible member of the world's footballing family. The most recent example for this is current DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach. On May 24th 2013, just several weeks after he was elected, the DFB president was voted into the UEFA executive committee during a ceremony held in London, thus also becoming the successor to Dr. Theo Zwanziger at UEFA. At the same time, Niersbach assumed responsibility of UEFA's committee for national team competitions and is also deputy chairman of the media committee and member of the financial committee. Former DFB president Theo Zwanziger will keep the DFB's executive committee seat in FIFA until 2015.
