On 30.09.1981, the second leg of Frankfurt’s 2-0 win in the first round of the Cup Winners’ Cup took place. With two goals by Giorgos Kostikou, PAOK took the game to a penalty shootout, where they eventually lost 5-4, when Christos Dimopoulos missed their fifth penalty.

Here’s a brief history and introductory guide to Eintracht Frankfurt:

• The club was founded on March 8, 1899. It is one of the founding members of the Bundesliga, with 54 seasons (33 of which were without interruption) in the top division, which makes it the seventh longest-running club in Germany’s top league. They were relegated in the 1995–96 season.
• Eintracht has won the German league once, the German Cup five times, the UEFA Europa League twice, and was also a finalist in the European Champions Cup.
• The only league title in their history was won in 1959, in front of 75,000 spectators at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, beating Kickers Offenbach 5-3 in extra time.
• On 18.05.1960, in Glasgow and Hampden Park, Eintracht were defeated by Real Madrid 7–3 in a game that has gone down as one of the best in history. How else could it be called, anyway? Alfredo Di Stefano scored three goals and Ferenc Puskas scored four goals.
• In 1980, the UEFA Cup was an all-German affair. Eintracht beat Borussia Monchengladbach in a two-legged final. The score was 3-2 in favor of Borussia in the first match, and Eintracht won 1-0 at home with a goal from 19-year-old Fred Schaub.
• On 18.05.2022 they won the Europa League, beating Rangers 5-4 on penalties (1-1), in the final in Seville, and won their first European trophy since 1980.
• There was, moreover, an interesting pre-history with Rangers. In the 1959-60 season, Eintracht, as champions of Germany, met the Scots in the semi-finals of the European Cup. Before the game, Rangers manager Scott Simon is said to have asked: «Eintracht, who are they?» The response from the Germans was ideal, a 6-1 win for Frankfurt (a performance described as the best in the club’s history), and 6-3 at Ibrox. A total aggregate score of 12-4!
• The period from 1973 to 1981 is regarded as Eintracht’s most successful period in the Bundesliga, as they won three German Cups and the UEFA Cup. Some of the most iconic players in the club’s history played for the team at that time, including Bernd Nickel, Charly Körbel, Bernd Hölzenbein, Jürgen Grabowski and Cha Bum-kun, the first Korean to play in Europe.
• After a difficult start to the 1976–77 season, Gyula Lorand took over. Since the November of that year, then, Eintracht remained unbeaten and finished two points behind champions Borussia Mönchengladbach. Soon, however, Lorand left for Bayern Munich and then Schalke, before taking over PAOK and celebrating the championship of 1976. The legendary Lorand sadly passed away on May 31, 1981, during a PAOK-Olympiacos derby match. He suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 58.
• After a crisis of some years, in 1988 Eintracht won the German Cup, with a 1-0 triumph over Bochum, and scorer Laios Detari, who was sold to Olympiacos, thus contributing to the repayment of the club’s debts.’
• In Greek the word Eintracht is translated as harmony or agreement, as the word united has a similar meaning in the English language.
• The team’s symbol is derived from the coat of arms of the city of Frankfurt, which itself is a reference to the single-headed Imperial Eagle of the 13th century. In Eintracht’s centenary year in 1999, the club decided to re-adopt a more traditional eagle crest. Since 2005, after all, it has had a live … mascot, a golden eagle named Attila from the nearby Hanau Zoo, who has appeared at more than 200 games.
• The club’s official colors are red, black and white, just like the colors of the founding clubs Frankfurter FC Viktoria and Frankfurter FC Kickers, the coat of arms of the city and Prussia.
• In the Europa League of the 2021–22 season, Eintracht wore white, and eliminated Barcelona inside the Camp Nou, hence the nickname la bestia blanca (white beast in Spanish).
• The team has many nicknames. «Die Adler» («The Eagles»), SGE, which comes from the old official name of the club Sportgemeinde Eintracht and which translates as «Harmony of the Sporting Community», but also «Moody Diva» (sounded more at the beginning of the decade of 1990, when Eintracht won the …difficult matches and lost the …easy ones, in terms of their rivals teams). There is another nickname, the ‘Schlappekicker’ (‘Slipper Kickers’) from the 1920s, when a local shoe and especially slipper manufacturer was a major financial supporter of the club.
• The player with the most appearances (602) in the Bundesliga, Charly Körbel, spent his entire career as a defender for Eintracht.
• The club’s main rivals are Kickers Offenbach. The oxymoron is that due to spending most of their history in different divisions, the two of them have only played two league games against each other in the last 40 years.
• Since 1925 its stadium has been the Waldstadion, which today is called Deutsche Bank Park.
• Last season, Eintracht reached the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League, where they were eliminated by Napoli. The Italians won both games, 3-0 in Italy and 2-0 in Germany.