Football · 1954 · Bern, Switzerland
The Miracle of Bern
Beaten 8-3 by Hungary earlier in the same tournament, West Germany come from two goals down to take the World Cup final off the unbeaten 'Golden Team'.
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 lopsided enough that the final looked like a formality. Ferenc Puskás, Hungary's captain and star forward, played it carrying an ankle injury from that earlier meeting.
Puskás and Zoltán Czibor scored inside the first eight minutes, exactly the start the form book called for. Sepp Herberger's West Germany answered immediately: Max Morlock pulled one back in the tenth minute and Helmut Rahn equalised by the eighteenth. Then a heavy downpour turned the Wankdorf Stadium pitch into a mudbath, which suited the studded boots West Germany were wearing, made by a young company called Adidas, rather better than it suited Hungary.
Rahn scored the winner in the 84th minute and West Germany held on to win 3-2. The radio commentator Herbert Zimmermann's call of the final whistle became a defining piece of postwar German broadcasting, and the Wunder von Bern has carried a good deal of weight in the country's account of its own recovery ever since.
Watch the Moment
