European Championship Stories: 1972, the greatest German team of all?

In 1974 West Germany won their second World Cup, but for many the 1972 European Championship winning team was even better.

At the Heysel Stadium in Brussels on the 18th June 1972, West Germany lifted their first major tournament trophy since the 1954 World Cup. Two years later, at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, they lifted the World Cup. Yet it is sometimes said that the team of 1972 is more fondly remembered than the team of two years later in Germany, and it is certainly fair to say that the road to these twin victories was not without its problems.

For most people under the age of fifty, West Germany and Germany has always been a footballing powerhouse at both club and international level, but the introduction of any degree of professional football to the country came to the country relatively late. By the beginning of the 1960s, West Germany still had no single, professional leaguee. Rather, the country’s leagues consisted of five regional Oberligen (leagues). But clamours for a more unified set-up would intensify with a disappointing performance in the World Cup finals at the start of the new decade.