Euro Icons - 1972: Gunter Netzer and the greatest Germany team of all time

You can get a decent estimate of a person’s age from their attitude to German football. Most members of Generation X, who grew up with the remorseless teams of the 1980s and 1990s, will suck on a lemon when the subject is mentioned. The eyes of millennials will come alive at the thought of Mesut Ozil, Marco Reus and all the others who have given German football a good name in the last 15 years. And Baby Boomers will tell you that an exciting, loveable German team is not a new concept at all.

They might even tell you about Ramba-Zamba-Fußball, the philosophy behind one of the greatest teams in international football history. In 1972, West Germany were the darlings of European football, an antidote to the increasingly defensive, dirty play elsewhere. The French newspaper L’Equipe said they played “dream football from the year 2000”. They won the European Championship in a manner that brooked not a solitary argument, and had observers around the continent – yep, even in England – embracing their poetic side.

“They are a pleasure to watch,” wrote Geoffrey Green in the Times. “Elegant and imaginative, they have an infinite variety to their game as they stroke the ball around in a flood of angles on the ground and in the air. It is like light being fed through a prism.”

The campaign was a showcase for their louche playmaker Gunter Netzer. He was the player of the extended tournament, a haughtily raised nose ahead of the languorous sweeper Franz Beckenbauer and the supernatural goalscorer Gerd Muller.

Like Beckenbauer, in particular, Netzer had no compunction about saying how good he and his team were. “My self-confidence,” he said once, “was astonishingly great.” Before the final against the USSR, Beckenbauer matter-of-factly told the press that, well yes, of course West Germany would win the match. From the outside, the whole thing seems like a triumph of justified arrogance. But that wasn’t necessarily the case.

The signature game of Euro 72 didn’t even take place during the tournament. This isn’t quite as odd as it sounds. The early European Championships, from 1960-76, comprised only four teams and lasted less than a week; they were some of the last examples of underkill in international football. The game of the tournament was technically a play-off, in effect a quarter-final first leg, when the eventual winners West Germany symbolically beat England 3-1 at Wembley.

Never mind younger readers; even the older ones might be surprised to read that England used to be West Germany’s bogey team. The 1966 World Cup final was their seventh consecutive win over the Germans. The balance of power started to change with a friendly win in 1968, the first time West Germany had ever beaten England, and the famous victory at the 1970 World Cup, when they came from 2-0 down to dethrone England in extra-time.

But it was one thing to beat England in Mexico, quite another to do so at their mythical fortress. No team from mainland Europe had ever won a competitive match at Wembley. On a cool Saturday evening, they sucked the aura out of Wembley and absorbed it into themselves, playing with such style and joie de vivre that a very good team were instantly empowered to become truly great.

The game is still seen as the most significant victory in the country’s history. It has achieved mythical status, so it’s only fair that one or two exaggerations have passed into legend. The received wisdom that West Germany battered England and could have won by four or five doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. Both teams created a similar number of chances. But while most of England’s opportunities came through sweat and crosses, Germany created theirs through serene, rhythmic passing.

There was a lightness to their football, in mood and touch, and a fundamental difference in class was obvious well before Uli Hoeness’s opening goal in the 27th minute. The match was a long, often painful, occasionally embarrassing demonstration of undeniable superiority. “They were the better technicians; an infinitely superior combination imaginatively,” said the Times match report. “They hit England below the intellect.”

It was this game that prompted L’Equipe to say West Germany were playing football from the year 2000. Many others went back in time, pointing out that England had not been humbled like this at Wembley since Hungary’s seismic 6-3 victory in 1953. Even when Francis Lee equalised with 12 minutes to go, Germany were unfazed. They’d won it once, so they won it again. Siggi Held won a penalty, converted by Netzer, and Gerd Muller produced another of his uncanny finishes.

Germany’s control of the match stemmed from their unique use of two playmakers within a 1-3-3-3 formation: Beckenbauer at sweeper and Netzer in midfield. They would regularly change positions, with Netzer dropping deep so that Beckenbauer could surge into and through the midfield. Nothing discombobulates a back line quite like a player charging through the centre of the field towards them, because the defensive shape on which they are so reliant goes out the window. The tactic was Netzer’s idea, based on a similar ploy he used with Jurgen Wittkamp at Borussia Monchengladbach. When he and Beckenbauer pitched the idea to the coach Helmut Schon, they received a short answer. “Do what you want – I don’t mind.”

The German tabloid Bild coined the phrase Ramba-Zamba-Fußball to describe Germany’s style of play, and specifically the influence of and interchange between Beckenbauer and Netzer. Ramba-Zamba a colloquialism, without a literal translation, but essentially means razzmatazz, hullabaloo or excitement – a boisterous party.

“It was about more than tactics,” says Uli Hesse, whose Tor! is the definitive history of German football. “There was a feeling about the team and how attack-minded they were. It was fun, you know? They were having fun. That’s what I associate with that team – a carefreeness that wasn’t quite there before and certainly wasn’t again for a long time.”

Beckenbauer and Netzer, in particular, looked like they were playing in slippers. Any video of their performance at Wembley should be soundtracked by a soft-porn jazz sax solo. Netzer’s Xavi-ish ability to control a game reached its peak that night. He was a precise, penetrative passer, who could keep the game ticking over with simple balls or open it up with a 50-yard homing missile. There have been few better long passers in the game’s history.

Almost everything was done in his own time, without rush or fanfare. In the second half of the Wembley game, England brought on Rodney Marsh up front. At one stage he did some impromptu keepy-uppy, prompting a huge roar from the Wembley crowd. Nothing came of it. English football talked a lot about mavericks in the 1970s, yet most of them were all hat and no cattle. At his best, Netzer was proof that mavericks could dominate games rather than decorate them.

Although Netzer was not quite as consistent as Wolfgang Overath, his rival for the role of midfield playmaker in the West Germany side, he was no luxury player. He won four league titles, two each with Borussia Monchengladbach – the first in the club’s history - and two with Real Madrid, as well as three cups. He was the first person to win West Germany’s Player of the Year award in consecutive seasons and was in kicker’s Bundesliga team of the season for seven years in a row. If anything he was the opposite of a highlights player.

At Wembley, the structure of both teams helped Netzer. West Germany’s midfield included his Monchengladbach team-mate Herbert Wimmer, who diligently carried water so that Netzer could walk on it. England played without a Wimmer, choosing three ball-playing midfielders in an attempt to maximise their home advantage in the first leg. Sir Alf Ramsey was slaughtered in the press after the game.

For the return match, even though they needed to win by at least two goals, Ramsey overcompensated: he put Norman Hunter and Peter Storey in midfield to thwart Netzer by foul means or fouler. The result was an unedifying 0-0 draw. England saved face with the result but lost it with their tactics. “The English team seems to have autographed my right leg,” said Netzer after the game. “In descending order I have marks from Summerbee, Hunter, Ball and Storey.”

Netzer even made post-match interviews interesting. He is most often compared to George Best, not for his style of play but his effortless cool and sense of rebellion. In fact they were fairly different: Netzer rarely drank, was not a huge womaniser and, unlike Best, was exceptionally comfortable in his own skin.

In Tor!, Uli Hesse argues that he was less a rebel and more an individualist with the aforementioned astonishingly great self-confidence. He had a pathological inclination to do things differently: he ran a bar called Lovers Lane, drove around in expensive cars with, kept his hair long whether people liked it or not. Oh and he was at the wedding of Frank Sinatra’s daughter, Tina, sharing a table with Neil Diamond and Sammy Davis Jr.

Had England qualified they would have hosted Euro 72; instead it was played in Belgium, who unexpectedly beat the holders Italy in the play-offs. With an emerging Netherlands side also failing to qualify – they lost out to Yugoslavia in the group stage – the West Germans were huge favourites once the final tournament started.

A month after the second leg of the play-offs – and with the Bundesliga season yet to finish – West Germany went to Belgium for the five-day, four-match tournament. They beat the holders 2-1 in the semi-finals, with Netzer creating both goals for Muller with an insouciant sweep of the right foot. The second was a devastating demonstration of his long passing. One second Netzer was swanning around on the halfway line; the next he shaped the kind of pass that most footballers couldn’t see, never mind play, to give Muller a simple finish.

Germany led 2-0 and held on relatively comfortably despite a late goal from Odilon Polleunis. They kept their cool amid a rare old fervour in Antwerp. The noise and excitement were such that guards at the local prison failed to hear one of the inmates sawing the bars of his cell in an attempt to escape.

Their opponents in the final were European Championship royalty. The Soviet Union were the dominant team in the early years of the tournament: winners in 1960, finalists in 1964 and semi-finalists in 1968, when they lost to the hosts Italy on the toss of a coin after a 0-0 draw.

For all that, most people fancied West Germany to win comfortably. One of the main reasons for that was that they had trashed the USSR 4-1 in a friendly three weeks earlier, with Gerd Muller scoring all four. It was the first time the USSR’s formidable defence had conceded more than one goal in a game for over two years.

Normal service was resumed when the USSR beat Hungary 1-0 in the semi-final in Brussels, with Evgeni Rudakov saving a late penalty from Sandor Zambo. They dealt with Zambo, but Ramba-Zamba was another challenge entirely, and the final was the expected mismatch. It hasn’t gone into folklore like the England game, yet West Germany played even better than they had at Wembley, and this time they really should have won by five or six. Once they went ahead, the match became a celebration of one of the greatest teams in football history.

At one stage they put over 30 passes together, which was unheard of in those days. Another long passing move, which led to Wimmer’s goal that made it 2-0, summed up the simple, penetrative brilliance of Germany’s football. The other two were scored by the inevitable Muller, giving him a total of 11 in the extended tournament. “Gerd Muller,” wrote Uli Hesse in Tor!, “scored with his shin, his knee and his backside, and sometimes even with his feet.”

The USSR felt he scored his first with his hand; they probably had a case, though they were going to lose regardless. It could be tempting to perceive Muller’s goals as fluky. By the time he retired with 68 in 62 international games, it was clear he possessed a supernatural instinct for goalscoring.

The final was more like a home game for West Germany, with three-quarters of the crowd having travelled across the border into Belgium. By the end of the match the fans had enveloped the pitch, and there was briefly a danger that the game might be abandoned.

Although Netzer did not control the game as he had at Wembley, and was caught in possession a few times, he still played a big part in all three goals. An acrobatic improvised volley off the crossbar led to a scramble that culminated in the first goal; his lazy pass to Jupp Heynckes was part of the relay run for Wimmer’s goal; and the third was one last reminder of Ramba-Zamba-Fußball. Netzer dropped to the edge of his own area while he and Paul Breitner played their way out of trouble. That created a chasm in midfield – not, this time for Beckenbauer but the stopper Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck. He ran the length of the field faster than you could say Schwarzenbeckenbauer, combining with Muller and Heynckes before Muller finished gleefully from close range.

The fluidity of West Germany’s play was one of the main reasons they were seen as a gift from the future. The wide players sometimes swapped wings, while Breitner – nominally a left-back – appeared anywhere and everywhere. His winning goal against Chile in the first game of the 1974 World Cup, a move he started at left-back and finished with a 25-yard rasper on the other side of the field, sums that up. It was Total Football in all but name.

At the end of the tournament, L’Equipe said Netzer was the best player on earth. He and Muller finished two votes behind Beckenbauer in that year’s Ballon d’Or poll. Only Johan Cruyff, who was a close fourth after Ajax’s European Cup, got even a sixth of the votes of West Germany’s spine.

It’s easy to understand why Uli Hesse describes Netzer as “the most exciting German footballer of all time”. He is the face, and long hair, of the greatest team produced by Europe’s greatest football nation.

The 1972 team is still seen as Germany’s greatest, which is not bad considering they won the World Cup two years later. By 1974, the crushing pressure of being hosts took away some of their sparkle and most of their joie de vivre, and the World Cup win was a triumph for will as much as skill. “In 1974 it was very businesslike, starting with all those discussions about bonuses,” says Uli Hesse. “And they had something to lose, because they were expected to win it.”

And there was no Ramba-Zamba-Fußball. Netzer had drifted out of the team because of fitness problems and a move to Madrid, with Overath replacing him. He played only 21 minutes in the tournament during the group-stage defeat to East Germany, when he looked like a karaoke version of himself. It was the only time he played in the World Cup – he had missed the 1970 tournament after crashing his Ferrari. By the time the 1974 final came round, he wasn’t even one of West Germany’s five substitutes.

His absence only enhances the legend. Sure, West Germany won, but what if they’d won with Netzer? A lot of sportsmen capture the imagination, but most give it back before they retire – either because they are exposed as a false messiah or because they roughly achieve what we expect. Netzer was different; of course he was. It wasn’t his choice, but he achieved something that all artists crave: he left the audience wanting more.