50 years of the Sparwasser goal: 1974 World Cup: One goal and three bravos

The legendary Sparwasser goal recently celebrated its 50th birthday. Jürgen Sparwasser scored it on June 22, 1974 at 9:03 p.m. in front of 60,000 spectators in Hamburg’s Volksparkstadion, giving the GDR a 1-0 victory against the Federal Republic of Germany. In the first and last encounter between these two national football teams, of all things at the World Cup in Germany. A highly symbolic affair: Capitalism could be defeated at home – by a “strong collective” about which Herbert Widmayer from the FRG coaching staff had previously complained that this was the GDR’s panacea because it lacked strong individual players. And then Sparwasser became this individual player and shone forever with his goal.

Thanks to this goal, the GDR won the group in the preliminary round and the Federal Republic of Germany ultimately became world champions for the second time. Because without this defeat they wouldn’t have been able to do it, they say today, because afterwards captain Franz Beckenbauer and coach Helmut Schön reorganized the team on the “Night of Malente” (a barracks-like sports school in Schleswig-Holstein), no longer so offensively and at the back better secured.

The famous match was now reenacted in Berlin as a “re-enactment”, in the cultural program for the European Championships as a two-person piece lasting a full 90 minutes plus 15 minutes at half time. Director Massimo Furlan first performed a variant in 2008, back then as a solo piece with him in the lead role as Sparwasser. The model for this could have been the avant-garde documentary “Football Like Never Before,” for which Hellmuth Costard filmed George Best during an unspectacular league game in England in 1970 and only showed him and his movements.

In the Berlin “reenactment” this time Furlan was only the West German goalkeeper Sepp Maier. Tanja Walther-Ahrens, who played in the women’s league for Tennis Borussia Berlin and Turbine Potsdam in the 90s, was a saver.

The whole thing took place, again highly symbolic, between the Gropius Building (formerly West Berlin) and the Prussian State Parliament (East Berlin). On Niederkirchnerstrasse, where the wall used to stand, there was a separated football field, the original length but narrower in width. The spectators sat on very uncomfortable seats in a small, covered stand. So these could very well have been real. In any case, Culture Minister Claudia Roth was genuine, watching the performance for 20 minutes and then disappearing with her entourage into the cabin, in this case a side door in the Gropius Building. On the other side there was a small tent where you could buy beer (0.33 Pilsner Urquell for 3.80 euros).

There was almost nothing to see. Because when two teams are equally good, they keep each other in check and the strikers and goalkeepers don’t have as much to do. Maier and Sparwasser’s running routes and movement sequences at the time were shown here – without a football, in a pantomimic manner, so to speak. Every now and then, Furlan, as Maier, threw himself onto a gymnastics mat, like the one you know from school lessons, because there was no grass, but hard asphalt. Walther-Ahrens, as a saver, usually stood in the center circle and sometimes sprinted forward or backward. Football is a slow, strenuous sport with a lot of idle time, that became clear again here.

But there was something to hear: the real radio reports from back then in full length, both from the West (the reporter was Heribert Fassbender) and from the East (Werner Eberhardt). You could have it sound on your phone when you downloaded a particular app, and you could also switch back and forth, from west to east and back. Above all, you should turn your cell phone volume up to create a dynamic that you could describe as a kind of football feeling. That was the whole idea of ​​this production.

When it got dark, Sparwasser scored the 1-0 in the 77th minute of the game, lit up like a saint with a spot. Afterwards, Walther-Ahrens Sparwasser did a sweet somersault on the gymnastics mat. So the socialists are happy! And the Berlin audience also cheered. In the first half, La Ola tried something very ironic, but it didn’t really work. Every now and then a beer bottle would fall over, making a bit of noise on the metal stand floor.

The radio reports were whirring from the cell phones that were turned up loud, which sounded like a mixture of a birdcage and moving car traffic. You just have to run two stations at the same time and you have acoustic action like in experimental music. In addition, there were stadium noises such as a babble of voices, applause and whistles from the loudspeakers, which were not necessary.

Even if we hear again and again these days that nationalism was hardly noticeable at the 1974 World Cup, a report that appeared in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” two days after the Sparwasser goal shows that The Hamburg spectators shouted stupidly and imperialistically “Germany, Germany” in chants, but the fans in the opposite stands used “every breath between the calls of ‘Germany’ to an astonishingly loud ‘GDR’.” West reporter Fassbender remarked live: “Among us, around 3,000 GDR battle-goers are singing ‘Yes, where’s the 1-0?'”

When Sparwasser finally scored in this “endurance game,” as Eastern reporter Eberhardt called it, Fassbender said it was “a nice goal” in “this thoroughly fair game.” In general, the tone of sports reporters at the time was much more circumspect, more objectifying and therefore also more sporty than the current vitalistic desire to shout along to football commentators, which, whether on the radio or on TV, is always on the verge of ridiculousness. According to the motto: You have no feelings for your country? I’ll scream it in your ear!

Eberhardt acted comparatively elegantly back then. »I shout Bravo three times… Bravo! Bravo! Bravo,” he took the liberty of exclaiming immediately after Sparwasser’s shot into the short corner, only to then declare after the final whistle: “First in Group 1 ahead of the Federal Republic of Germany? I think you would first need a collection of thoughts.«

There was almost nothing to see. Because when two teams are equally good, they keep each other in check and the strikers and goalkeepers don’t have as much to do.

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