Germany's four stars: a 60-year masterclass in collective football

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Look at the front of any German national team jersey since 2014 and you will see four stars stitched above the federation crest. They mark four World Cup wins: 1954, 1974, 1990, 2014. They span sixty years of soccer history and three different versions of the country itself — West Germany after the war, West Germany during the Cold War, unified Germany after the Berlin Wall came down. The geography keeps changing. The footballing identity does not.

Of all the great nations in this sport, Germany is the one with the longest, most consistent track record of being good.

Let me walk you through the four stars.

1954: The Miracle of Bern

For the first nine years after the Second World War, German soccer existed under restrictions. The team was banned from FIFA until 1950. They returned to a World Cup for the first time in 1954, hosted in Switzerland, and were expected to be barely respectable. The favorites were the Hungarian "Mighty Magyars" — Ferenc Puskás's team, which had not lost a match in four years and had thrashed England 6-3 at Wembley a few months earlier.

In the final on July 4, Hungary scored within eight minutes. Then they scored again. West Germany 0, Hungary 2 after ten minutes. Everyone watching expected the rout that the tournament had been waiting for.

It did not arrive. Germany scored to make it 2-1. Then 2-2 before halftime. In a rainstorm, on a heavy field, with eighty-six minutes gone, Helmut Rahn struck the winner. Final: West Germany 3, Hungary 2. Das Wunder von Bern. The Miracle of Bern. It is the foundational story of postwar West German football — and arguably of postwar West Germany itself, because for the first time in a generation a country had something it could share unequivocally.

1974: Beckenbauer's home tournament

Twenty years later, West Germany hosted. The team was led by Franz Beckenbauer — Der Kaiser, the man who reinvented the role of central defender by playing it like a midfielder. Total Football, the Dutch revolution led by Johan Cruyff, was at its peak. The two teams met in the final at the Olympiastadion in Munich on July 7, 1974.

Beckenbauer was the captain. Gerd Müller — Der Bomber, one of the most clinical finishers the sport has ever produced — was the striker. Müller had won the Golden Boot at the previous World Cup (1970, ten goals) and would finish his career with fourteen World Cup goals, then a record.

The final was 2-1. Müller scored the winner in the forty-third minute. Germany lifted the trophy. Years later, in 1990, Beckenbauer would coach West Germany to another World Cup title — making him one of three people in history to win the trophy as both a player and a coach. (The other two: Mário Zagallo of Brazil, Didier Deschamps of France.)

1990: West Germany's last title, just before the country reunified

The 1990 World Cup was played in Italy and was, by goals per match, the lowest-scoring tournament ever (2.21). West Germany was the exception. They won the trophy, beating Argentina 1-0 in the final on a penalty by Andreas Brehme in the eighty-fifth minute — Argentina's second straight final, but this time without enough Maradona to save them.

The captain was Lothar Matthäus, who had been a young player in 1986 and was now thirty years old in the role Beckenbauer had once filled. The coach was Beckenbauer himself.

Three months later, Germany reunified. West Germany, the federation, ceased to exist. The 1990 trophy is the last one to bear that name. Every German title since has been won by Germany — same federation, same uniform color, slightly different country.

2014: A long wait, a quiet masterclass

Germany did not win a World Cup for 24 years between 1990 and 2014 — a long stretch for a country with their pedigree. They reached the final in 2002 (lost to Brazil). They reached three straight semifinals: 2006, 2010, 2014.

In 2014 in Brazil, under coach Joachim Löw, they finally finished it. The decisive moment was a goal by Mario Götze in the 113th minute of the final, slotted past Argentina's goalkeeper to make it 1-0. Germany became the first European team to win a World Cup in the Americas — a record that had stood since the tournament began. Argentina's Lionel Messi finished as the tournament's best player without winning it. (We talked about how that story ended eight years later, in Doha.)

The 2014 tournament also produced Miroslav Klose — Germany's striker, born in Poland, who scored in the semifinal against Brazil to overtake Ronaldo as the all-time World Cup top scorer with 16 goals. That record has not been broken. He played in four World Cups (2002, 2006, 2010, 2014), scored in every single one, and retired from international football after the trophy lift in Rio.

The German idea

If you had to summarize sixty years of German World Cup soccer in one sentence, it would be something like: the team is more than its best player. Beckenbauer was a star, but the 1974 team was a system. Klose was the leading scorer, but the 2014 final was won by Götze, a substitute. The Mannschaft — the team — is the unit of measurement, and the system has been more durable than any individual idea inside it.

Tomorrow we close out our first ten days with a country whose World Cup run in 2022 broke a sixty-year barrier in this sport: Morocco, the first African team to reach a World Cup semifinal. We will look at how they got there, the squad that built it, and what it might mean for the entire African continent this summer.

See you then.