England–Germany football rivalry

National team association football rivalry

The English and German national football teams have played each other since the end of the 19th century, and officially since 1930. The teams met for the first time in November 1899, when England beat Germany in four straight matches. Notable matches between England and Germany (or West Germany) include the 1966 FIFA World Cup final, and the semi finals of the 1990 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 1996 and the round of sixteen of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2020. While the English public, football fans and in particular newspapers consider an England–Germany football rivalry to have developed, it is mostly an English phenomenon since most German fans consider the Netherlands or Italy to be their traditional footballing rivals. In this article, references to the German football team include the former West Germany football team before German reunification.

The Football Association (FA) instigated a four game tour of Germany and Austria by a representative England team in November 1899. The England team played a representative German team in Berlin on 23 November 1899, with the German side losing 1–0. Two days later a slightly altered German side lost 10–2. The third and fourth matches were played in Prague and Karlsruhe against a combined Austrian and German side, and England won 6–0 and 7–0. Those games cannot be considered as "official" and are known as "proto international matches" (Ur Länderspiele) in Germany because they were organised by a regional federation from Berlin and the German Football Association (DFB) was not founded until 28 January 1900. On the other hand, the DFB considers four matches played between 1908 and 1913 against the England national amateur football team of the FA as official matches against England, while the FA does not. The first ever full international between the two teams was a friendly match played on Saturday 10 May 1930, in Berlin. England were 1–0 and 2–1 up in the game, but after losing a player to injury went behind 3–2, before a late goal from David Jack brought the score to 3–3, which was how the game finished. The next match between the two teams was played on 4 December 1935, at White Hart Lane in London, the first full international to take place between the teams in England and the first since the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in 1933. It was also the first match to stir up particular controversy, as The Observer newspaper reported protests by the British Trades Union Congress that the game could be used as a propaganda event by the Nazi regime. "No recent sporting event has been treated with such high seriousness in Germany as this match Between 7,500 and 8,000 Germans will travel via Dover, and special trains will bring them to London. A description broadcast throughout Germany Sir Walter Citrine, General Secretary of the TUC, in a further letter to Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, said that 'such a large and carefully organised Nazi contingent coming to London might confirm the impression among people in this country that the event is being regarded as of some political importance by the visitors'." Of the match itself, however, which England won 3–0, the same newspaper reported the following week that: "So chivalrous in heart and so fair in tackling were the English and German teams who played at Tottenham in mid week that even the oldest of veterans failed to recall an international engagement played with such good manners by everybody." The next game between the two teams, and the last to be played before the Second World War, was again in Germany, a friendly at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on 14 May 1938, played in front of a crowd of 110,000 people. It was the last time England played against a unified German team until the 1990s. This was the most controversial of all the early encounters between the two teams, as before kick off the English players were ordered by the Foreign Office to line up and perform a Nazi salute in respect to their hosts. How compliant the players were with this situation has been a matter of debate, with a feature in The Observer in 2001 speculating that they were "perhaps merely indifferent players (who had undoubtedly become more reluctant, to the point of mutiny, by the time the post war memoirs were published)." A BBC News Online report published in 2003 reported that the salute was calculated to show: "that Germany, which two months earlier had annexed Austria, was not a pariah state. The friendly game effectively helped clear the way for Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" deal with Hitler, which, in turn, led to Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia." England won the match 6–3, but according to German writer Ulrich Linder, author of the book Strikers for Hitler: "To lose to England at the time was nothing unusual because basically everybody lost to [them] at the time. For Hitler, the propaganda effect of that game was more important than anything else." The England players celebrated a goal, but the referee was unsure as to whether or not the ball had crossed the line when it hit the ground. After consulting with a linesman, Tofiq Bahramov, the referee awarded a goal to England. Bahramov, from the Soviet Union, became famous and celebrated in English popular culture as "the Russian linesman", although he was actually from Azerbaijan. When England played the Azerbaijan national team in a World Cup qualifier in October 2004—in a stadium named after Bahramov—many England fans travelling to the game asked to be shown the grave of the official, who had died in 1993, so that they could place flowers on it, and before the game a ceremony honouring him was attended by Hurst and other footballing celebrities. West Germany, however, did not believe that the ball had crossed the line, with commentators such as Robert Becker of Kicker magazine accusing the linesman of bias because the West German team had eliminated the USSR in the semi final. Modern studies using film analysis and computer simulation have suggested the ball never crossed the line – both Duncan Gillies of the Visual Information Processing Group at Imperial College London and Ian Reid and Andrew Zisserman of the Department of Engineering Science at University of Oxford agree that the ball would have needed to travel a further 2.5–6 cm to fully cross the line, and that therefore this was not a fair goal. In West Germany, it led to the creation of the expression "Wembley Tor", or "Wembley Goal", a phrase used to describe any goal scored in a similar fashion to Hurst's. England, however, scored another controversial goal at the end of extra time, winning 4–2. This goal came after fans began to spill onto the field, thinking the game was over, which should have stopped play. The goal, a third for Hurst (making him the only man ever to score a hat trick in a World Cup final until Kylian Mbappe in 2022), was described by BBC Television commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme in a now famous piece of commentary, "They think it's all over it is now! ", referring to the English fans who had spilled onto the field. The expression has become a celebrated part of English popular culture, indelibly linked with the game in the minds of the English public. The 1966 final's influence on the culture surrounding the England team would not end there, however. Despite playing on their home soil, England wore their away kit of red shirts, white shorts and red socks, and since then England fans have had a special affinity for their team's away kit, with retro 1966 shirts selling well in recent years. The game is often held as having been the height of English sporting achievement, it has also created some favourable legacies; a common chant among England supporters at Germany games is "Two World Wars and One World Cup" to the tune of "Camptown Races". Two years after the World Cup, on 1 June 1968, the two teams met again in another friendly match, this time in West Germany, in which the West Germans won their first victory over an English team, 38 years after they had first played. The scoreline was 1–0, Franz Beckenbauer scoring for West Germany, but as Hugh McIlvanney wrote in his match report for The Observer: "Comparing this miserable hour and a half (in which fouls far outnumbered examples of creative football) with the last great meeting between the countries is entirely fatuous. But that will not prevent the West Germans from doing it. Their celebrations will not be inhibited by the knowledge that today's losers were almost a reserve team, and even the agonies of boredom they shared with us will now seem worthwhile. They have beaten England, and that is enough."

Far more noted and remembered, however, was the next competitive meeting between the two teams, in the quarter finals of the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. England were 2–0 up, but Beckenbauer and Uwe Seeler equalised at 2–2 in the second half. In extra time, Geoff Hurst had a goal mysteriously ruled out and then Gerd Müller scored in extra time to win 3–2. England had been weakened by losing their goalkeeper Gordon Banks to illness, and also substituted Bobby Charlton, one of their leading players, while the Germans were in the midst of their comeback. As McIlvanney put it when reflecting on the loss five days later, "Sir Alf Ramsey's team are out because the best goalkeeper most people have ever seen turned sick, and one who is only slightly less gifted was overwhelmed by the suddenness of his promotion. In sport disaster often feeds upon itself but this was a sickeningly gluttonous example." The result was psychologically damaging for English morale—as The Guardian newspaper described in a 2006 feature: "Four days later Harold Wilson blamed Labour's loss in the general election on the defeat. This marked the start of two decades of German footballing dominance and England's decline." Two years later the teams met once more, in the quarter finals of the European Championship, which were at the time held on a home and away basis. England lost 3–1 at Wembley on 29 April 1972 in the home leg, and on 13 May could only draw 0–0 in West Germany, being knocked out of the competition. Said The Observer in 2001: "England may have been robbed of the chance in Mexico but there were no shortage of excuses – the heat, the hostile crowd, the food which had felled Banks, the errors of Bonetti It was a conspiracy of fate more than a footballing defeat. In 1972, there were no excuses at all. West Germany did not just knock England out of the European Championships, they came to Wembley and comprehensively outclassed England."

As well as the rivalry between the national sides, English and German club teams have also met on numerous occasions in the various European club competitions. The English hold the upper hand in club football encounters.

Other memorable matches were the controversial 1975 European Cup final in which Bayern beat Leeds United after the latter had penalty claims turned down by a French referee who also disallowed a goal scored by Peter Lorimer with a shot from outside the area. Apart from the 1977 European Cup final, Liverpool beat Mönchengladbach, they also met in the 1973 UEFA Cup final and the 1978 European Cup semi final. Liverpool had defeated four German sides on their way to victory in their 1973 win. In the final first leg at Anfield, Liverpool won 3–0, only for Borussia Mönchengladbach to pull back to 3–2 on aggregate by half time. The Reds hung on in the second half. Aston Villa defeated FC Bayern Munich in 1982 European Cup final in Rotterdam. In the memorable 1999 UEFA Champions League final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich, United were trailing 1–0 until they scored two late goals in injury time to win 2–1. On 19 May 2012, Bayern Munich met Chelsea in the 2012 UEFA Champions League final. Bayern Munich suffered defeat at the Allianz Arena; a game dubbed "Finale dahoam" (Bavarian for "final at home") as it marked the second time that any team played the tournament's final at their home ground. The game ended as a 1–1 draw after extra time before being decided 4–3 on penalties. Bayern Munich seemed like the more dominant of the two sides throughout, but could not break down Chelsea's defence. Borussia Dortmund's wins over holders West Ham United and Liverpool (final in Glasgow) in the 1965–66 European Cup Winners' Cup were memorable as were West Ham's win over TSV 1860 Munich at Wembley Stadium in the final of the same competition a year earlier. Chelsea also defeated VfB Stuttgart in the final of 1998.

Leeds would eventually eliminate a German team (VfB Stuttgart) in unexpected and bizarre circumstances. After the Germans had qualified, in the first round of the 1992–93 UEFA Champions League, on the away goals rule, the return leg was awarded by UEFA 3–0 to Leeds United because Stuttgart fielded an extra foreigner, thus infringing the European competition rules that were in place at the time. A replay was ordered as the aggregate stood at 3–3. Leeds won the replay at Barcelona's Camp Nou 2–1. Borussia Dortmund beat Manchester United 1–0 both home and away in the semi final of the 1996–97 UEFA Champions League which they won, United having been guilty of squandering numerous chances in both legs, especially the return leg at Old Trafford. In the 2015–16 UEFA Champions League, Bayern Munich defeated Arsenal 5–1 in the group stage. In the next year's competition they met again in the round of 16, where Bayern repeated the scoreline home and away for a 10–2 aggregate victory. On 1 October 2019, Bayern thrashed Tottenham Hotspur 7–2 win in a 2019–20 UEFA Champions League match. The outspoken Brian Clough is on record boasting that he never lost to a German side and that he took satisfaction from this for what the Germans had done to his father during the war. Clough memorably led Nottingham Forest to a 1–0 win in Cologne following a 3–3 draw at the City Ground in the 1979 semi final en route to Forest winning their first European Cup. There were also some encounters between English league sides and clubs from East Germany which mostly ended in favour of the English sides, although these confrontations were less spectacular than those involving clubs from West Germany.

The rivalry between the two nations has not prevented their respective nationals from playing in each other's domestic leagues, many notable German players have played in England, including Bert Trautmann (Manchester City), Jürgen Klinsmann (Tottenham Hotspur), Jens Lehmann (Arsenal), Michael Ballack (Chelsea), Mesut Özil (Arsenal), Lukas Podolski (Arsenal), Jérôme Boateng (Manchester City), Bastian Schweinsteiger (Manchester United) and İlkay Gündoğan (Manchester City). Trautmann was voted Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year in 1956 for continuing to play in goal for Manchester City in the 1956 FA Cup final despite a neck injury. Klinsmann was voted the same accolade in 1995 while playing for Tottenham, where he pioneered the 'diving' goal celebration. Fewer Englishmen have played in Germany, with notable players being Kevin Keegan (Hamburger SV), Jude Bellingham (Borussia Dortmund), Owen Hargreaves (Bayern Munich). Keegan won two consecutive Ballon d'Or awards and was a European Cup finalist during his time at Hamburg.