Germany national football team

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the 5th of April 1908, Germany played its first official international football match against Switzerland in Basel, and lost 5-3. It was an inauspicious beginning for a team that would go on to win four FIFA World Cups, three European Championships, and accumulate the most World Cup semi-final appearances in history. But the road from that Basel defeat to a 7-1 dismantling of Brazil at the Maracana would run through two world wars, a divided nation, and one of football's most enduring sporting identities.

  How did a team that could not afford to travel to the first World Cup in 1930 become the most consistent force in the tournament's history? What role did the fracture of Germany into East and West play in shaping the team? And how did a single match in Bern in 1954 become inseparable from West German national identity?

  Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. Pioneers and Painful Starts

  ›

  Before any official record existed, a match on Hamburg soil in April 1897 hinted at the friction to come: a Danish selection defeated a Hamburg-Altona selection 5-0. Between 1899 and 1901, German sides faced English selection teams in five matches that neither nation's association would recognize as official, partly because England fielded their amateur overflow side. One of those games ended in a 12-0 loss at White Hart Lane in September 1901.

  Julius Hirsch became the first Jewish player to represent the national team when he joined in 1911. A year later he scored four goals against the Netherlands, making him the first German to score four in a single match. At the same 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Gottfried Fuchs set a mark that would stand for nearly a century: ten goals in a 16-0 win against Russia on the 1st of July. That world record was not surpassed until 2001, when Australia's Archie Thompson scored thirteen goals in a 31-0 victory over American Samoa. Fuchs was Jewish. Between 1933 and 1945, the German Football Association erased all record of him.

  The national team's first dedicated manager arrived in 1926: Otto Nerz, a school teacher from Mannheim, who held the position until 1936. The DFB could not fund the trip to the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay during the Depression, but reached third place at the 1934 tournament in their debut. Sepp Herberger replaced Nerz after a poor showing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. His 1937 squad produced an 8-0 win over Denmark in the then-German city of Breslau, Lower Silesia, earning the nickname the Breslau Elf.

• 3. A Nation Divided, Three Teams

  ›

  After World War II, Germany was banned from most international competition until 1950. Three separate German football nations then emerged: West Germany, continuing the DFB's pre-war lineage; the Saar Protectorate, a French territory that sent its own team to the 1952 Olympics and the 1954 World Cup qualifiers before acceding to the Federal Republic in 1957; and the German Democratic Republic, which established its own football association, the DFV, in 1952.

  East Germany accomplished something no other team managed at the 1974 World Cup: it beat the eventual champions. Playing their one and only competitive meeting with West Germany, the East Germans won 1-0 in the group stage. The result made little difference to West Germany's trajectory through the tournament, but the symbolism lingered. East Germany also claimed gold at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, fielding its top-level domestic players under an amateur classification that West Germany's professionals could not exploit.

  When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the two associations were playing each other in UEFA Euro 1992 qualifying. By November 1990 the DFV had integrated into the DFB, and East Germany played its last match on the 12th of September 1990. The first unified Germany team took the field against Switzerland on the 19th of December 1990. At the 1994 World Cup, Germany's first as a reunified nation, only one former East German player, Matthias Sammer, made the roster, appearing in four of Germany's five matches.

• 4. The Miracle of Bern

  ›

  West Germany arrived at the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland as a team without expectations. In the group stage they faced Hungary, a side that had gone unbeaten for 32 consecutive matches and were considered the tournament favourites. West Germany lost that group game 3-8.

  The two sides met again in the final. Hungary's unbeaten streak had held through every round. Captained by Fritz Walter, West Germany won 3-2. Helmut Rahn scored the decisive goal. The result passed into German culture under the name it carries to this day: Das Wunder von Bern, the Miracle of Bern. It was West Germany's first World Cup title and its first major tournament appearance since the war.

  The kit that West Germany wore in that final was supplied by Adidas. That sponsorship, which began in 1954, would continue uninterrupted until 2026, a stretch of more than seventy years.

• 5. Contested Goals, Legendary Games

  ›

  Helmut Schoen took over as coach in 1964, replacing Herberger after 28 years in the role. Professionalism had just arrived; the Bundesliga had assembled the best clubs from the regional leagues into a single national division. Two years later, West Germany reached the World Cup final in England.

  The match against hosts England produced one of the sport's most debated moments. In extra time, Geoff Hurst struck the crossbar and the ball bounced down. The linesman signalled a goal. Replays suggested the ball had not fully crossed the line. Hurst scored again and England won 4-2.

  Four years later, West Germany knocked England out of the 1970 tournament in the quarter-finals 3-2. In the semi-final, they faced Italy in a game that has since been called the Game of the Century in both countries. The match ended 4-3 after extra time, with five goals scored in the additional period. West Germany took third place by beating Uruguay 1-0. Gerd Müller finished as the tournament's top scorer with ten goals, a tally that would become part of his lasting statistical legacy.

• 6. Beckenbauer's Double

  ›

  Franz Beckenbauer became national team captain in 1971, and led West Germany to the European Championship title at Euro 1972, defeating the Soviet Union 3-0 in the final. Two years later, as hosts of the 1974 World Cup, he captained the side to a second World Cup, defeating the Netherlands 2-1 in the final in Munich. Paul Breitner equalized from the penalty spot before Gerd Müller settled the match.

  Beckenbauer returned to the national team setup as manager after West Germany's early exit at Euro 1984. He led the side to three consecutive World Cup finals: runners-up in 1986, losing to the Diego Maradona-led Argentina 2-3; runners-up again in 1982; and champions in 1990 in Italy, where West Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in the final through an Andreas Brehme penalty in the 85th minute. Captained by Lothar Matthäus, the team had beaten Yugoslavia, UAE, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and England on penalty kicks to reach Rome.

  That victory made Beckenbauer the first person to win a World Cup as both captain and manager, and only the second, after Brazil's Mario Zagallo, to do so as player and manager.

• 7. The 2014 Campaign

  ›

  Germany arrived at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil with Thomas Müller's hat-trick in their opening match, a 4-0 routing of Portugal. When Miroslav Klose equalized against Ghana at 2-2, his 15th World Cup goal placed him level with Brazil's Ronaldo at the top of the all-time scoring list. A 1-0 win over the United States, managed by former Germany head coach Jürgen Klinsmann, sent them through.

  In the semi-final against the host nation, Germany scored four goals in less than seven minutes. By the 30th minute the score was 5-0. Müller, Klose, Sami Khedira, and two from Toni Kroos provided those goals. Germany's eventual 7-1 win was Brazil's worst World Cup defeat, and it set several records simultaneously: the first team to reach four consecutive World Cup semi-finals, the first to score seven goals in a knockout match, the fastest five consecutive goals in World Cup history with four scored in 400 seconds, and the first team to score five first-half goals in a World Cup semi-final.

  The final was held at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro on the 13th of July. Mario Götze scored in the 113th minute. Germany won 1-0, becoming the first European team to win a FIFA World Cup in the Americas. At the close of that tournament, Germany's Elo rating reached 2,223, the second highest ever recorded for any national team.

• 8. Kit, Culture, and Continuity

  ›

  Germany's home shirt has been white since the team's origins. The colour derives from the 19th-century flag of the North German state of Prussia, while the away kit's traditional green comes from the DFB's own colours. A persistent claim that green was chosen in honour of Ireland, supposedly the first nation to play Germany after World War II, is incorrect: the first post-war opponent was Switzerland.

  Three stars were added above the crest in 1996 to mark the 1954, 1974, and 1990 World Cup titles. A fourth star followed the 2014 victory. Adidas had supplied the kit since that first championship in 1954. In March 2024, Nike was announced as the replacement kit sponsor after 70 years of Adidas, drawing widespread criticism. Nike's deal runs from 2027 to 2034 at approximately 100 million euros per year.

  Lothar Matthäus holds the record for most appearances with 150 caps, earned between 1980 and 2000. Miroslav Klose stands as Germany's all-time leading goalscorer with 71 goals in 137 appearances, a career that ran from 2001 to 2014. Klose's 16 World Cup goals, scored across multiple tournaments, broke Gerd Müller's long-standing record of 14 in 2014. Joachim Löw managed the team for 198 matches, the most by any Germany head coach, before stepping down after UEFA Euro 2020.