The “Miracle of Bern” on 4 July 1954 thrilled 14-year-old Dietmar Hopp so much that a few days later he turned up at TSG Hoffenheim wanting to play. “I wanted to be Fritz Walter too,” he later explained in a feature on the club website. He played his first match in his brother’s knickerbockers and football boots because, almost ten years after the war, thrift was still the rule in Kraichgau.\n\nAlso entirely in keeping with the economic-miracle years: substantial food for footballers. Forget nutrition science and food coaching – in the Hoffenheim of the 1950s, and even when Eintracht Frankfurt entered the Bundesliga in 1963, sausage specialties on the menu were completely normal.
