Feelgood film brings it all back for football fanatics

It will be half a century next year since an unlikely triumph brightened up German soccer but the German Chancellor did not wait for the anniversary to shed a tear.

Gerhard Schroeder let his emotions flow during the premiere of director Soenke Wortmann's Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Berne).

More 2 million people have already watched the film, which recalls West Germany's 1954 World Cup-winning saga and has topped the German charts since its release last month.

After attending a screening in the coal-mining town of Essen, where the story takes place, Schroeder stood up and addressed the women in the audience.

"If your husbands tell you after this film that their eyes are red because there were so many flies in the theatre, don't believe them," said Schroeder, who hitchhiked to Berne as a teenager just to see the outside of the locked-up stadium where West Germany upset an awe-inspiring Hungary team 3-2 in the 1954 final.

West Germany's stunning victory in the Swiss city was not just about football. It gave a country devastated by World War II and haunted by the Nazi atrocities something to be proud of and historians say it triggered the ensuing "Economic Miracle."

"The 3-2 win in Berne gave us all the feeling that we mattered again," 1954 captain Fritz Walter, who died last year, wrote in his memoirs. "It was an honor not just for football but for a whole country and an entire generation after World War II."

Wortmann's is a little melodramatic, mixing the World Cup finals with a fictional father-son tale, but it does show how a country turned away from a humiliating past by identifying with young men in football shirts, some of whom had fought in the war.

"I was never a big fan of German movies," Wortmann, a former second division player, said. "They too often take the quiet intellectual approach and not the emotional.

"I'm pretty critical of my own films but I do like this one."

It is about an 11-year-old boy, who lives in Germany's depressed industrial heartland, the Ruhr Valley, and finds a father figure in Helmut Rahn, an international striker from local side Rot-Weiss Essen known to his fans as "The Boss."

The boy, Matthias, accompanies Rahn to training, carrying his gear, and melts when the Boss tells him he is his lucky charm.

When Matthias's real father comes home from a decade in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, he struggles to win the trust of a son he barely knows. But he eventually succeeds and decides to take the boy to Berne to watch the final.

Traveling a battered, borrowed car, the pair arrive just in time to see Rahn score the winning goal.

Wortmann's nurtures the perception among many Germans that they suffered from the war more than they had been responsible for it and the fact that Sepp Herberger, who took over as coach of the national team in 1936, was once a member of the Nazi party is never mentioned.

Herberger pictured as a grumpy man with a soft spot who pretends not to see when Rahn and a few other players return drunk to the team's hotel.

West Germany also lifted the World Cup in 1974 and 1990 and the Germans are now established heavyweights expected to shine at every major tournament but things were different in 1954.

The formidable Hungary team, featuring all-time great Ferenc Puskas and several other exceptional players, had not lost for four-and-a-half years and had thumped West Germany 8-3 in a group game earlier in the 1954 finals.

Herberger said before the final that in dry weather Hungary's superior pace and individual talent should give them the edge.

The skies were blue over the Swiss Alps in the days before the final but on the day it rained.

A heavy ball and a soggy pitch prevented Hungary's artists from showing off their skills. Puskas and company still opened up a 2-0 lead but the Germans fought back, levelling the game before Rahn fired from the edge of the box with six minutes remaining to present them with a shock victory.

"I just hit the ball as hard as I could," Rahn, who died in August, once said of his winning goal. "I didn't see where the ball was going but I knew it was in the net."