KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: Horst Eckel, last survivor of the West German team who shocked favourites Hungary in the 1954 World Cup Final, has died aged 89. Right half Eckel, then 22, was the youngest member of the team.

Eckel played 32 games for West Germany and most of his club career with Kaiserslautern, with whom he was German champion in 1951 and 1953. In 2004 he was awarded the Cross of Merit, the highest civil distinction, on the 50th anniversary of the ‘Miracle of Bern’.

The victory is popularly seen as a critical signpost in the regeneration of the Federal Republic from the wreckage left by the second world war in which Eckel’s elder brother Hans was killed.

Hungary took an early 2-0 lead before the Germans hit back to win 3-2. Eckel took a key role in marking Hungary’s deep-lying centre-forward Nandor Hidegkuti.

Years later Eckel said: “At the final whistle we knew we were world champions. But we only registered what we had achieved in Bern when we crossed the border by train. We had to stop at every station, and thousands everywhere wanted to greet us.”

Eckel, nicknamed ‘Greyhound,’ became a secondary school teacher after retiring from football.

He was hailed as a “wonderful person” whose life had been shaped by “willpower and ambition, determination and humility,” by German federation vice-president Rainer Koch. Being called a “hero of Bern” always bothered him. “I was still a perfectly normal person,” he always insisted.

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