Journal

In the summer of 1990, West Germany's national soccer team won the World Cup. At that stage, there were no players from East Germany in the team. Having won the title, squad manager Franz Beckenbauer famously said: "With unification and the players from the former East, Germany will be unbeatable for years". But it wasn't to be. The German team made it to the finals of the European Championships two years later - but lost to Denmark. And in the years that followed, there were more ups than downs for the national soccer squad. It was a similar story in other sports - where the hoped-for success stories failed to materialize. Expectations that sports teams made up of the best of the two former rival nations would conquer all before them proved to be somewhat off the mark.