Wembley Eleven (1972)

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On April 29, 1972, the proposed German national football team , the England team at London's Wembley Stadium with 3: 1 in EM - quarter-finals of the 1972 European Championship .

Due to the first victory of a German national soccer team in England, the team was named after the venue Wembley-Elf . They are still considered to be the strongest DFB team of all time. In 2011, Sport Bild magazine rated this game as the “greatest German international game of all time” out of 842 international matches.

Tournament course

For the European Championship in Belgium in 1972 (as well as for the European Championship in Yugoslavia in 1976 ), qualifying matches were held in eight groups. In the quarter-finals, the eight group winners determined the four final round participants, one of whom was chosen as the organizer, through a round trip. Only the semi-finals, the match for third place and the final were single matches and took place in the host country Belgium.

The German national team qualified for the quarter-finals after passing the qualification phase. With England she was drawn on January 8, 1972, a difficult opponent. Most recently, both teams had faced each other in the hard-fought quarter-finals of the football World Cup in 1970 (3: 2 a.d.). The first leg took place on April 29, 1972 in London, the second leg on May 13, 1972 in Berlin (0-0).

Line up against England

National coach Helmut Schön had to put together a Notelf that had never played together like this: the national players from FC Schalke 04 were suspended due to the Bundesliga scandal , the regular players Wolfgang Overath , Berti Vogts and Wolfgang Weber were injured.

The German team played in a green-white-green away dress with the following line-up:

Course of the game

Since Jürgen Grabowski was available again after a previous injury, Helmut Schön took Heinz Flohe and Jupp Heynckes off the team. Grabowski played on the right winger, Uli Hoeneß , who only made his debut in January of that year, was a bit withdrawn in midfield.

Another tactical move by Schön was to pull Netzer back from midfield into defense. Together with Beckenbauer, he took turns with attacks on the offensive. Karl Heinz Bohrer , then England correspondent for the FAZ , wrote the much-quoted sentence "Netzer came from the depths of the room" because of this system change.

Uli Hoeneß scored the 0: 1 after a presentation by Held in the 26th minute. After chances on both sides, the English, who had dominated the game in the second half until then, equalized to 1-1 in the 77th minute after Franz Beckenbauer made a mistake by Francis Lee .

Then the German team again took the initiative and got in the 84th minute after a through pass from Müller hero who was fouled in the penalty area, a penalty . Accompanied by whistles, Netzer placed the ball, the goalkeeper slipped over Banks ' hands and bounced off the inside post into the goal. In the 88th minute, Gerd Müller completed a combination of Held and Hoeneß with the 3: 1 and thus scored his 43rd international goal, which he drew level with Uwe Seeler as the record scorer.

analysis

On behalf of the trade journal 11 Freunde , scientists from the Sport University Cologne analyzed national team games from 1958–2010. In the game of the Wembley team, they paid special attention to Günter Netzer. He had 99 actions on the ball, 88 of them offensive actions and played 64 successful passes: each the highest value of all players. Netzer and Beckenbauer played the ball 20 times alone.

The speed of the ball was 2.9 meters per second when the Germans played it - a value that was also above average in the 2010 World Cup - while the English only managed 1.64 meters per second.

Further course of the EM

The second leg in Berlin ended 0-0, with Germany, along with Belgium , Hungary and the Soviet Union , reaching the EM semifinals held in Belgium . This was won 2-1 against hosts Belgium in Antwerp, the final against the Soviet Union, which had previously lost only one of 20 games against Germany with 4-1 at the opening of the Munich Olympic Stadium , in Brussels 3-0.

The majority of this team also became world champions in 1974 two years later . It was the first time that a team was European and world champions at the same time. The French (1998 World Champion, 2000 European Champion) and the Spanish (2008 European Champion, 2010 World Champion, 2012 European Champion) succeeded in doing this.

literature

  • Raphael Keppel : Germany's international football matches. Documentation from 1908–1989. Sport- und Spielverlag Hitzel, Hürth 1989, ISBN 3-9802172-4-8 .
  • Kurt Brumme: But one thing, but one thing, that remains! Football report. LINDA Sales Promotion and Publishing GmbH, Hamburg 1973.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1972 - Germany wins the title. In: sportschau.de. April 10, 2008, accessed August 12, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Sport Bild , No. 6 of February 9, 2011, p. 46 ff
  3. ↑ From the depths of space. In: faz.net. November 19, 2008, accessed August 12, 2010 .
  4. ↑ How good was Netzer really? In: 11 Freunde , issue 109, December 2010

Web links