No camera was present and the slope was not so pronounced anyway when Günter Netzer tended to Franz Beckenbauer on April 29, 1972 in the changing room and was whispered to the memory protocol: “If we get fewer than five pieces, it is one Success.” The “emperor” agreed.

Following large events afterwards, previous facts often blur. For example, that there was also a second leg, because the quarter -finals at the 1972 European Championship still belonged to qualification, not to the final tournament at that time only four nations. Or that Germany, which was missing in Berti Vogts, Karl-Heinz Schnellinger and Wolfgang Weber, was considered a clear outsider.

Now in the European Championship: The eight-part series for the European Championship victory in 1972. European Championship

Perhaps it was the courage of despair, which was a very special performance in Wembley, which was quite young by national coach Helmut Schön, where only very few guests had to celebrate something after Hungary’s famous lesson in November 1953. But above all Beckenbauer and especially nets went, no stormed ahead into a new German football time – at least temporarily.

Hoeneß scored the first goal

At the time, the European Championship enthused from a “game that only existed once” when playmaker is said to have come from the famous “depth of the room” and raised a rapid German combination game that the favorite English were not up to. Not even on her holy lawn by Wembley.

Germany celebrated 50 years ago, the goal scorers were called Uli Hoeneß, Günter Netzer and Gerd Müller, his first victory in English soil – the 0-0 in the tough second leg of Berlin is then blurred again. Unlike the European Championship finals in Belgium in mid-June, where the Germans crowned themselves as European champion for the first time. With the best team they ever had through their spectacular play strength.

Weuern stories and details about Germany’s first European championship title you have been able to read in our eight-part European Championship series for the 50th anniversary since Monday-also in the European Championship Emagazine app (Android or Apple).