Welcome back to my humble blog as Season 2016/17 got underway with a lovely weekend, and three games, in the east of Germany.
The mighty Everton, along with Real Betis and Werder Bremen, were taking part in a pre-season tournament at the Stadion Dresden, the home of Bundesliga 2 side Dynamo Dresden.
After the old Rudolf Harbig Stadium was redeveloped, the stadium in it's present form was opened in 2009. The ground is a typical modern stadium with a capacity of 32,000.
Dynamo have returned to the second tier this season after two years in the 3.Liga. The club, established in 1953 as part of the Dresden police force, are a famous name in German football with an illustrious history.
The club enjoyed it's most successful spell in the 1970's, under the management of Walter Fritzsch, winning the East German title five times (1971, 1973, 1976, 1977 and 1978) and also two domestic cups, (1971 and 1977). They played in European competition every year during the 1970s, and beat some big teams such as Porto, Juventus and Benfica along the way (they also got thrashed by Liverpool, but we will gloss over that). Dresden also came up against West German opposition for the first time, losing against Bayern Munich 7-6 on aggregate in the last 16 of the 1973/74 European Cup.
It was around this time that Erich Mielke began manipulate the league in favour of Dynamo Berlin, who won the GDR championship 10 years in a row from 1979 to 1988, a European record, amid accusations of dodgy penalties, dodgy time keeping, disallowed goals. Dresden finished runners up six times in this period.
With German reunification in 1990, Dynamo Dresden joined the Bundesliga for the start of the 1991 season but had four seasons of struggle before being relegated in 1995. The club had also accumulated debts of more than 10 million DM, and were denied a license to play in the 2. Bundesliga, and had to drop down to the third tier Regionalliga Nordost. Rolf-Jürgen Otto, the club's president, was jailed for having embezzled around 3 Million DM.
The next few years were spent in the Regional leagues before returning to the 2.Bundesliga in 2004. The club has had it's up and downs since then but are now back in Germany's second tier.
This game was the second of four games in this mini-tournament, with Real Betis beating Werder Bremen 1-0 in the first game, before Everton take on the Spaniards tomorrow prior to the all German game that rounds off the tournament.
Pre-match was spent seeing the sights of Dresden, which is a beautiful city, with some amazing architecture, which has been painstakingly rebuilt after the efforts of Arthur Harris in 1945. The were also a couple of fine Brahaus' which, naturally, had to be visited!
The game was a typical tepid pre-season affair, but there were still some of the errors from Roberto Martinez's reign which new Manager Ronald Koeman has yet to iron out.
Everton had plenty of chances to see off Dresden but were caught out on the break for the home sides first goal, a tap in scored by Niklas Hauptmann and undone by a super strike from Pascal Testreot midway through the second half.
In between though Gerard Deulofeu side footed home a stunning free kick that found its way into net via the underside of the crossbar.
The 1,000 or so travelling Evertonians were kept in the ground after the game before being escorted back to town where the festivities continued into the wee small hours.
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