Helmut Rahn
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| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Helmut Rahn | ||
| Date of birth | 16 August 1929 | ||
| Place of birth | Essen, Germany | ||
| Date of death | 14 August 2003 (aged 73) | ||
| Place of death | Essen, Germany | ||
| Height | 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) | ||
| Playing position | Wing Forward | ||
| Youth career | |||
| 1938–1946 | SV Altenessen 1912 | ||
| 1946–1950 | SC Oelde 1919 | ||
| 1950–1951 | Sportfreunde Katernberg | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1951–1959 | Rot-Weiss Essen | 201 | (88) |
| 1959–1960 | 1. FC Köln | 29 | (11) |
| 1960–1963 | SC Enschede | 69 | (39) |
| 1963–1965 | Meidericher SV | 19 | (7) |
| Total | 418 | (145) | |
| National team | |||
| 1951–1960 | West Germany | 40 | (21) |
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Helmut Rahn, known as Der Boss (The Boss), (16 August 1929 – 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).
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 .
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 Sportclub Enschede in the Netherlands.
In the Bundesliga 1963 he started playing for MSV Duisburg. He finished his career in 1965 because of a knee problem and, along with Hans Schäfer was one of the last members of the 1954 World Cup winning side to retire. His position was that of an outside right.
His legendary status in German football was sparked by the heroic achievement of the German team in the final of the 1954 World Cup. Germany, whose team members themselves were surprised to be in the final, was playing Hungary, who hadn't lost a single match for four years running up to the World Cup final. Germany lagged behind 0–2 after only eight minutes, but then pulled it back to 2–2 with Rahn assisting the first German goal and scoring the second. With six minutes remaining, Rahn received the ball just outside the penalty box before going past a Hungarian player and managing to shoot at the lower left corner with his weaker left foot just before being tackled. The ball whistled into the back of the net and Germany went on to win the game 3–2 over the apparently unbeatable Hungarian team. This match is known in Germany as The Miracle of Bern (Das Wunder von Bern) because of its "David versus Goliath"-like setting, and it is generally seen as an instrumental part of the rebuilding of the German people's morale after the World War II.
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