Bayer Uerdingen's miracle of Berlin' bewildered Bayern Munich before slow fade to obscurity

Bayer 05 Uerdingen won the 1985 German Cup final by beating holders Bayern Munich 2-1 at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. The match produced a rare giant-killing moment in German football, where major clubs had long dominated. The final was staged in West Berlin for the first time since 1953, when the DFB-Pokal final had typically been held in neutral venues across West Germany. The Olympic Stadium was packed with 72,000 spectators and drew national attention. The upset was especially striking because Bayern had established overwhelming success, including multiple German Cup titles and European Cup wins in the mid-1970s, while Uerdingen came from the smaller city of Krefeld.

"Bayer 05 Uerdingen had just beaten the holders Bayern Munich 2-1 to win the 1985 German Cup final. Looking back now, it remains a seismic inverting of the natural order in a nation more used to an honour roll dominated by a handful of major clubs. Bayer 05 Uerdingen wrenched the big bronze-and-gemstone trophy from the southern aristos' grasp at the Olympiastadion in (then) West Berlin, before German reunification."

"Since 1953, the climax of the competition had been a moveable feast, staged all over West Germany in neutral venues from Dusseldorf, to Kassel, to Stuttgart, to Hannover and places in between but that year, at long last, the grand old stadium that staged the 1936 Olympic Games had been spruced up and once more held 72,000 spectators, with the rest of the nation tuning in. Berlin's Olympic Stadium was packed out for the 1985 DFB Pokal Cup final."

"The magnitude of Uerdingen's upset must be gauged against the supremacy of Bayern Munich. By 1985 the Bavarians had won the German Cup seven times since its first iteration in 1953, as well as the European Cup hat-trick of 1974, 1975 and 1976 that placed them among the first rank of the continent's football powerhouses."

"By contrast Uerdingen are the club of Krefeld, an unassuming German city of around 300,000 souls on the north Rhine, a place perennially eclipsed by its"

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