Football · 1954 · Bern, Switzerland
The Miracle of Bern
West Germany, beaten 8-3 by the same opponent earlier in the same tournament, come back from 2-0 down to beat Hungary's previously unbeaten 'Golden Team' in the World Cup final.
West Germany 3-2 Hungary
Result
32 matches
Hungary's unbeaten run entering
Hungary 8-3 West Germany
Earlier group meeting
Hungary arrived at the 1954 World Cup final unbeaten in 32 consecutive matches and had already thrashed West Germany 8-3 in the group stage, a result so lopsided that West Germany's team for the final was expected to be a formality for the Hungarians to get past. Ferenc Puskás, Hungary's captain and star forward, played the final carrying an ankle injury from that earlier meeting.
Hungary scored twice inside the first eight minutes through Puskás and Zoltán Czibor, exactly the start their form suggested. West Germany, managed by Sepp Herberger, responded immediately: Max Morlock pulled a goal back in the tenth minute and Helmut Rahn equalised by the eighteenth, before a heavy downpour turned the Wankdorf Stadium pitch into a mudbath that suited West Germany's studded boots, made by a young company called Adidas, better than Hungary's.
Rahn scored the winner in the 84th minute, and West Germany held on to win 3-2. West German radio commentator Herbert Zimmermann's ecstatic call of the final whistle became a defining piece of postwar German broadcasting, and the upset itself, still known in Germany as the Wunder von Bern, is widely credited as a symbolic moment in the country's postwar recovery and reconstruction of national identity.
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