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HELMUT RAHN

Helmut Rahn, known as Der Boss (The Boss), (born 16 August 1929 in Essen; died 14 August 2003) was a German football player. He became a legend for having scored the winning goal in the final game of the 1954 FIFA World Cup (West Germany 3 - Hungary 2).

Career

Helmut Rahn started his career with Altenessen 1912 where he played from 1938 until 1946. Then he went to SC Oelde 1919 with a total score of 52 goals for that team. In the 1950/51 season he played for Sportfreunde Katernberg.

He was most successful when he played for Rot-Weiss Essen from 1951 - 1959. The team won the DFB-Pokal final in 1953 and won the German Championship in 1955. For one year, from 1959 till 1960 he had played at 1. FC Köln, 1960 he went to Twente Enschede in Netherlands.

In the Bundesliga 1963 he started playing for MSV Duisburg. He finished his career in 1965 because of a knee problem.

He became a legend and a German football hero in the final of the 1954 World Cup. The German team was playing Hungary. Germany lagged behind 0-2, then they pulled it back to 1-2 (set up by Rahn) before Rahn managed to score both the equaliser and the winning goal, with the match eventually ending in a 3-2 win for the Germans. This match is known in Germany as The Miracle of Bern (Das Wunder von Bern).

Rahn was also part of the German team that reached semifinals at the 1958 World Cup. With his goal against Yugoslavia, he became at the time the third maximum scorer in World Cups, with 10 total goals (behind Just Fontaine and Sándor Kocsis), and also the first player ever to score at least 4 goals in two different World Cups.

Rahn played 40 international matches and scored a total of 21 goals.

Helmut Rahn - Memorial

On July 11, 2004, 50 years after the Bern match, a lifesize statue of him was put up near Georg-Melches-Stadium in Essen, on the square named after him.

External links

West Germany West Germany squad - 1954 World Cup Champions (1st title) West Germany

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