1925: Hakoah Vienna Sports Club Becomes First Professional Football Champion

On June 13, 1925 the Vienna Athletic Sports Club (WAC) beat the Vienna Amateur Sports Club 2:1 in the final round of the Vienna football championship (first class). In the end, it was the Hakoah Vienna Sports Club who won the championship title of 1924/25, which was held for the first time that year as a professional league competition, because they were leading the overall competition ahead of the Vienna Amateurs. Hakoah Vienna's exclusively Jewish team was composed of Viennese players and Hungarian reinforcements around midfielder Béla Guttmann.

Vienna was the centre of Central European Danubian football at that time, and the victory of the Zionist sports club in the prestigious league became a symbol of a self-confident “muscular Judaism” and Jewish self-assertion in the “swastika-infested” city of Vienna (Wiener Morgenzeitung).

Founded in 1909, Hakoah Vienna and its associated clubs had more than 1500 members during its heyday and formed the centre of the Zionist gymnastics and sports movement in Vienna. Jewish participation in football was, however, not limited to Hakoah; until 1938, officials and athletes from Jewish families participated in many clubs.