England–Germany 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.

England player and broadcaster Gary Lineker notoriously said "Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." He would paraphrase himself following the final of the UEFA Women's Euro 2022, saying: "Football is a simple game. 22 women chase a ball for 90 minutes and, at the end, England actually win."

''In this article, references to the German football team include the former West Germany football team before German reunification.''

History

Early encounters

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 1908-1913 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 hemat the time. For Hitler, the propaganda effect of that game was more important than anything else."

The two countries did not meet again on a football pitch for sixteen years. Two German states had been founded in 1949, with the Germany national football team continuing its tradition, based in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) fielded a separate national football team; although the English did play some matches against them, the rivalry never developed the same edge or high-profile. A third German team, Saarland, also briefly existed between 1950 and 1956. However they never played a match against England.

In a friendly at Wembley Stadium on 1 December 1954, England won 3–1 against an under-strength West German side, who were at the time the champions of the world, having won the 1954 FIFA World Cup. England won further friendlies against West Germany in 1956 (3–1 at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin) and 1965 (1–0 in Nuremberg).

1966–1969: 1966 FIFA World Cup

England and West Germany met at Wembley again on 23 February 1966, as part of their preparations for the 1966 FIFA World Cup, which was to be held in England. England again won 1–0, with a goal from Nobby Stiles, and the match also saw the first appearance for England of West Ham United striker Geoff Hurst.

Both countries had a successful World Cup in 1966, and met in the final played at Wembley on Saturday, 30 July 1966. This was and still is regarded by many as the most important match ever played between the two teams, and it was also the first time they had ever met in a competitive game, as opposed to the friendly matches they had played before. It was also a highly eventful and in some respects controversial game, which created the modern rivalry between the teams.

England led 2–1 until the very end of normal time, when a West German goal levelled the scores and took the match into extra time. In the first period of extra time, England striker Geoff Hurst had a shot on goal which bounced down from the crossbar and then out of the goal, before being cleared away by the West German defenders. 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."

1970–89: 1970 FIFA World Cup

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." McIlvanney wrote in his match report for ''The Observer'': "No Englishman can ever again warm himself with the old assumption that, on the football field if nowhere else, the Germans are an inferior race."

1990–99: 1990 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 1996

There were several friendly games played in the 1970s and 1980s, with wins for both nations, but the next competitive match—a second round group game at the 1982 FIFA World Cup—ended in a disappointing 0–0 draw. England were later eliminated from that competition after drawing Spain 0-0, while Germany reached the final. However, when the teams next met competitively, at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, it was a rather more dramatic and eventful clash in the semi-finals, the first time England had reached that far in the competition since their win in 1966.

In summer 1990, the process of German reunification had advanced far, with the Deutsche Mark being introduced in the East two days before the semifinals on 3 July. Unlike in previous decades, East German fans could openly support the German team of the DFB which by then had an 80+ year tradition.

The England team had started the event poorly and had not been expected to reach that stage of the competition, but in the game they could match the stronger German team, managed by Franz Beckenbauer. The Germans took the lead in the 59th minute when a free-kick from Andreas Brehme deflected off Paul Parker and over goalkeeper Peter Shilton. Gary Lineker equalised in the 80th minute, and then David Platt had a goal ruled out in extra time. The result was thus decided by a penalty shoot-out—the England team's first—which West Germany won 4–3 after misses from Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle. England would lose to host nation Italy for the third-place consolation match, whilst West Germany defeated Argentina in the final.

The match stayed heavily in the English popular consciousness — not simply for the football and the dramatic manner of the defeat, but also for the reaction of star player Paul Gascoigne to receiving a yellow card. His second of the tournament, his realisation that this would see him suspended for the final should England make it prompted him to burst into tears on the pitch. Said ''The Observer'' in 2004, "There are half a dozen images that define this decade of change, which help to show why football widened its appeal. First, and most important, is the sight of Paul Gascoigne crying into his England shirt after being booked in the 1990 World Cup semi-final against West Germany. Unaggressive and emotional, a billboard image that helped to start an apparently unstoppable surge in popularity for the national team."

Despite this rehabilitation of the image of football aided by the English national team's success in the 1990 tournament, the narrow defeat by Germany helped to increase the antipathy felt towards the German team and the German nation in general. Mark Perryman wrote in 2006: "How could we expect to beat mighty (West) Germany, who had only narrowly lost the final four years previously? To my mind it is the fact that we so nearly did, then lost in the penalty shoot-out that explains the past 16 years of an increasingly bitter rivalry."

Germany was reunited in October 1990. For the DFB team, few things changed apart from players previously capped for East Germany becoming eligible for the united German team. This made little difference to the tone and emotion of the rivalry.

England's first match against the unified Germany since 1938 was a friendly in 1991 at Wembley, which the Germans won 1–0. Five years later, at the 1996 European Championships, England played a unified German team for the first time in a competitive fixture, when they met in the semi-finals. Like the 1966 World Cup, the tournament was being held in England, and the semi-final was played at Wembley Stadium. England's fans and team were confident, particularly after wins in the group stage over Scotland (2–0) and the Netherlands (4–1) and their first ever penalty shoot-out victory, over Spain, in the quarter-finals. So vivid were the memories of 1966 for England fans that a media clamour ensued for England to wear red jerseys, instead of the unfamiliar-looking grey away kit that had been launched earlier that year (as England had not submitted details of any red kit to UEFA before the tournament, this was never going to be permitted, and England did wear grey).

The build-up to the game was soured, however, by headlines in English tabloid newspapers which were regarded by many as overly nationalistic, and even racist in tone, as they had also been before the previous match against Spain. Particularly controversial was the ''Daily Mirrors headline "Achtung! Surrender! For You Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over", accompanied by a mock article aping a report of the declaration of war between the two nations in 1939. The editor of the paper, Piers Morgan, subsequently apologised for the headline, particularly as it was at least partially blamed for violence following England's defeat, including a riot in Trafalgar Square.

England took the lead in only the third minute, through tournament top scorer Alan Shearer, but in the 16th minute Stefan Kuntz equalised, and despite many close shots and a disallowed goal from the Germans, the score remained level at 1–1 until the end of extra time. The match was settled by another penalty shoot-out, as in 1990, and although this time all five of England's initial penalty-takers were successful, so were all five German players. The shoot-out carried on to "sudden death" kicks, with Gareth Southgate missing for England and Andreas Möller scoring for Germany to put the hosts out. As in 1990, Germany went on to win the tournament.

Also the FA cancelled a friendly with Germany as it was pencilled for 20 April 1994 as it coincided with Hitler's 105th would-be birthday and played at the Berlin Olympic Stadium, the venue for the controversial and Nazi-politicized 1936 Summer Olympics.

2000–09: 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifier

England and Germany were drawn to meet each other in the first round group stage of the Euro 2000, held jointly by Belgium and the Netherlands, with the England–Germany game taking place in Charleroi in Belgium. Before the game, played on 17 June 2000, there were violent incidents involving England fans in the town centre, although these were mostly brief and there were no violent confrontations with German fans. Nonetheless, reporting of the violence did to a degree overshadow the match result in some media coverage.

The match itself was a scrappy affair that lacked the drama of many of the previous encounters, with England sneaking a 1–0 win thanks to a second-half header by striker Alan Shearer. There was enthusiastic celebration of this result in England, particularly as this was the first time that England had won a competitive match against Germany since the 1966 World Cup final. The German reaction was more pessimistic. Rounding up the German media coverage, ''The Guardian'' reported: "'0–1! Germany weeps. Is it all over?' asked the mass circulation '' Bild'' newspaper in a front-page banner headline. 'Shearer tells us to pack our bags,' wrote Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel."

In the event, both England and Germany lost their final group matches and both were knocked out in the first round, finishing third and fourth respectively in their group, which was the worst German result in a tournament since the 1938 World Cup, while England had already experienced that multiple times in the two previous decades.

England and Germany had also been drawn together in the same qualifying group for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. England's home match against Germany was played on Saturday 7 October 2000, and was significant as it was the last international fixture ever to be played at the old Wembley Stadium, before it was demolished and rebuilt. England lost 1–0 to a German free kick scored by Dietmar Hamann. "It was the last refuge of the inadequate. Half-time neared, England were a goal down and a sizeable section of the crowd sullied the ever-dampening occasion. 'Stand up if you won the War,' they sang", wrote journalist Ian Ridley in his match report for ''The Observer''.

The result prompted the immediate resignation of England manager Kevin Keegan, and by the time the return match was played at the Olympic Stadium in Munich on 1 September 2001, England were now managed by their first ever foreign coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson. Expectations on the English side were low, but they surprisingly won the game 5–1 with a hat-trick from striker Michael Owen, and eventually qualified for the World Cup as the winners of their group. During the game the father of German coach Rudi Völler suffered a heart attack inside the stadium, but was successfully resuscitated.

Some Germans were shocked by the scale of the defeat, with former striker Karl-Heinz Rummenigge stating that "I have never seen such a terrible defeat ... This is a new Waterloo for us."

At the 2002 World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea, it was Germany who enjoyed more success, finishing second. England only reached the quarter-finals. Both teams were defeated by the competition winners, Brazil.

The two teams did not meet in Euro 2004, 2006 World Cup or Euro 2008. (Germany suffered a second consecutive group elimination in 2004, England avoided a showdown with Germany in the last 16 by holding Sweden to a draw and finishing at the top of their group, and England did not qualify for Euro 2008).

England and Germany next played on 22 August 2007, in a friendly at the newly-rebuilt Wembley Stadium. England lost the match 2–1, their first defeat at the new Wembley, with Germany, following the unexpectedly successful 2006 World Cup, still rebuilding the national team. Then in a friendly held on 19 November 2008, England inflicted Germany's first defeat in Berlin in thirty-five years with a 2–1 victory.

2010–2019: 2010 FIFA World Cup

In the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the two teams met in the second round on Sunday, 27 June, after Germany won Group D and England finished second in Group C.

Germany won the match 4–1, knocking England out and advancing into the quarter-finals. This was the greatest defeat England ever suffered in their World Cup history. In the 38th minute, a shot by Frank Lampard controversially bounced off the crossbar well into the goal and back out again with Germany leading only 2–1. However, neither the referee Jorge Larrionda nor the linesman saw it pass over the line.

The decision drew immediate comparisons with Geoff Hurst's so-called "Wembley Goal" during the 1966 World Cup Final. However, in the 2010 case there was no dispute about whether the ball had crossed the goal line, because the ball had clearly touched the grass well within the goal, and the television replay immediately showed this. In Germany, it was regarded as "payback" for the goal of 1966.

Following Germany's 1–0 win over England at Wembley in November 2013, German tabloid '' Bild'' humorously declared on its front cover that "Wembley is now German".

2020–present: UEFA Euro 2020 and beyond

On 29 June 2021, England won their encounter in the UEFA Euro 2020 round of 16 match 2–0, their first win over Germany in a knockout stage of a tournament and also England's first competitive victory on home soil against Germany since the 1966 World Cup final. This is also Germany’s second defeat in the round of 16 of a major tournament after the 1938 FIFA World Cup.

Comparison of England and Germany in major international tournaments

Women's football

Club football

The German women's league is considered one of the strongest in the world. By the end of the 2021–22, German clubs had won nine Champions League titles, while an English club had won the competition on only one occasion ( Arsenal in 2007).

National teams

The German women's team was generally more popular in Germany than the English women's team is in England. Germany matches were televised on national television and attracted millions of viewers. The World Cup 2011 quarterfinal between Germany and Japan attracted over 17 million viewers, while England women's matches struggled to even make it into television schedules.

England's group games in the World Cup 2011 were watched by up to four million viewers on German television, but less than a million on BBC
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