BVB heroes Möller, Mill and co star in new film out today | OneFootball

Today, a film is hitting theaters whose title will immediately tell anyone who followed football back then what it’s about. “A Summer in Italy” premieres today, in which the German World Cup champions of 1990 look back and relive how it all happened. This documentary is also connected to BVB, as several players from the World Cup-winning squad played for BVB, either in 1990 or at a later time.

The summer of 1990 was special for Germany not only because the DFB team crowned perhaps its best tournament with the title win—their third World Cup after 1954 in Switzerland and 1974 on home soil. In November 1989, the wall that separated the two German states at the time had fallen. Germany was not yet reunited, but there was a general sense of euphoria because millions of East German citizens had suddenly gained the freedom that had been denied to them for decades—and many of them used this opportunity to travel to the tournament in Italy.

There, in the squad nominated for the World Cup by “team boss” Franz Beckenbauer, who did not have a coaching license, were two current Borussia Dortmund players: Andreas Möller and the recently deceased Frank Mill. In addition, Jürgen Kohler, Stefan Reuter, Karl-Heinz Riedle, and yes, even Thomas Häßler were four more professionals in the German squad who would later go on to play for Borussia Dortmund.

All of Germany celebrates with Beckenbauer’s World Cup winners in 1990

The film “A Summer in Italy” by director Vanessa Nöcker retells this “fairytale,” as Andreas Möller calls it, summer and the title win. It features new, intimate insights from a total of 18 of those protagonists—players and coaches from 1990.

In the Tagesspiegel, Stefan Herrmann describes this as the film’s great strength: “that only players like Häßler and members of the coaching staff have their say in the film; 18 eyewitnesses who were not only there, but truly in the thick of it.” In this way, the story of the tournament is not retold, but enriched with many interesting details.

The film follows the events chronologically. From the euphoric 4-1 opening win over Yugoslavia, to the legendary round of 16 match, which was won 2-1 against Holland and in which Frank Rijkaard spat at Rudi Völler—strangely, both received red cards—to the one-sided final in Rome, where the also recently deceased Andreas Brehme scored the winning goal against Argentina. And thus made this 1990 squad, with the six former BVB players mentioned above, world champions.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.