With Saskia Bartusiak, Kerstin Garefrekes, Renate Lingor, Birgit Prinz, Silke Rottenberg, Sandra Smisek and Petra Wimbersky, 1.FFC Frankfurt have no fewer than seven current FIFA Women's World Cup winners in their ranks. The 2007 German champions look like they are well on the way to retaining their title, and with seven league championship wins to their name, they are the most successful club in the history of German women's football. They are also the only team to have spent all 18 seasons in the Bundesliga, as either 1.FFC Frankfurt or in their previous guise up until 1999 as SG Praunheim.

The women's Bundesliga began in 1990/91, with Praunheim among the 20 founder members along with Bayern Munich and SC Bad Neuenahr who are still in the top flight today. At the German Football Association's annual general meeting in 1989, it was decided to create a second division of the Bundesliga, based on the German national team's win in the UEFA Women's European Championship which they had hosted that year.

From 1990-1997, the league was made up of two groups of ten teams, except during the 1991/92 season when each group had 11 teams after two teams from the former East Germany were admitted. TSV Siegen were the first ever champions, beating FSV Frankfurt 4-2 in the final. Current Germany manager Silvia Neid was in the winning team that day and is well placed to comment on the development of the sport. "It's clear to see how things have come on. The games today are played on a totally different level," says Neid.

In the 1997/98 season, the Bundesliga was reduced to one 12-team league while in 1993, the playing time was increased to 45 minutes each half as opposed to 80-minute matches previously.

One of the original stars of the women's Bundesliga at the beginning of the 1990s was Heidi Mohr. As well as being capped 104 times for her country, she also set a record which is yet to be broken, finishing top of the scoring charts five seasons in a row - four times with TuS Niederkirchen and once with TuS Ahrbach. If anyone is likely to equal this feat then it is three-time World Footballer of the Year Birgit Prinz. The 30-year-old, who holds the record for caps and goals for the German team, was the league's top scorer in 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2007. She is very much in the running to the repeat the feat this season and is by far and away the most recognisable face of German women's football.

When the Bundesliga was inaugurated, it was the teams from smaller towns who dominated, but in recent years the big cities such as Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Duisburg have had the upper hand. Men's professional clubs have also increased their presence in the women's football Bundesliga, with Bayern Munich, SV Hamburg, VfL Wolfsburg and SC Freiburg now involved, but for nearly a decade now it has been 1.FFC Frankfurt, FCR Duisburg and Turbine Potsdam who have been sharing the titles among themselves.

Potsdam were champions in 2004 and 2006, while Duisburg won in 2000. Frankfurt are the leaders however with six titles to their name.

Since the German women's football team won their first ever FIFA World Cup at USA 2003, the number of spectators for Bundesliga matches has also risen significantly. At the outset, there were barely 200 fans on average at each match, but by the 2006-2007 season, this had gone up to over 700, and four-figure attendances are now commonplace even when the top teams are not involved. The record for attendance was set in 2003 when 7,900 fans witnessed a 0-0 draw between Potsdam and Frankfurt which was enough to give the latter the league title.

Spectators are not the only thing that the Bundesliga is attracting in greater numbers - foreign talent is also flocking to Germany. Players from the heartlands of women's football such as USA, Denmark and Sweden are all plying their trade in Germany at the moment, and the Bosman ruling also applies to the Bundesliga, giving EU citizens unrestricted opportunities. On the other hand, the number of non-EU players allowed in each team was reduced from five to three at the start of the 2006-2007 season, and currently only 10% of players in the top league are from outside Germany, as opposed to more than half in the men's Bundesliga.