“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for a 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans win.” Gary Lineker’s famous quote does not translate into Italian. When Germany and Italy meet in Bordeaux on Saturday, it will be their ninth competitive match, all at major tournaments. Germany have never won.

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Joachim Löw, the Germany coach, says he is unperturbed by the past but others cannot escape it. After Germany beat Slovakia on Sunday, Franz Beckenbauer said Spain were his preferred quarter-final opponents. “Italy,” he said, “eliminated us too often without being the better team.” His comments reflect the way many Germans feel about Italy. They are a team who are not to be trusted, because they do unto Germany what Germany do unto everyone else: win whether they play well or not.

His suspicion stems originally from Italy’s 4-3 victory in the incomparable 1970 World Cup semi-final, a match in which Beckenbauer – in those days a midfielder – spent extra time sauntering from box to box with his arm in a sling because of a serious shoulder injury. The first competitive meeting came at the World Cup in Chile eight years earlier, a 0-0 draw that had been forgotten before it even finished. Their next World Cup match will last for ever.

When West Germany’s Milan defender Karl-Heinz Schnellinger made it 1-1 in stoppage time after an interesting but unexceptional 90 minutes, the match exploded. The 30 minutes of extra time were not so much “you attack, we attack” as “you score, we score”. Gerd Müller’s supernatural awareness helped him score twice from a combined distance of 0.1 yards to make it 2-1 and then 3-3, but his equaliser had not even been properly digested when Gianni Rivera settled the match. The last six goals were scored in 22 minutes. In the context of catenaccio’s golden age, the Italy defenders would probably have been tried for treason had they not won the match.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest West Germany’s goalkeeper Sepp Maier laments being beaten by Gianni Rivera’s winning goal for Italy in a 4-3 thriller at the 1970 World Cup. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

After the game there was an animated discussion as to whether it was a classic or merely incredible in the truest sense of the word – lacking credibility because the defenders were so exhausted by the altitude. That discussion has been going on ever since.

It’s true some players had their own private postcode at the time of scoring; equally, there will probably never be another World Cup semi-final with a last-minute equaliser followed by five goals in extra time, and the overload of drama was such that it has been immortalised as The Game of the Century. It even has a commemorative plaque at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico, where the match was played.

Even during the game, West Germany were aggrieved with the performance of the generally excellent referee Arturo Yamasaki, who to their eyes denied a series of penalty appeals and indulged Italy’s penchant for visiting the turf. At one point, an exasperated German radio commentator said he could “make out that Tarcisio Burgnich has just perished in the penalty area”.

That is about as controversial as this fixture gets. It is not so much a rivalry as a classic. No one has motioned to wipe their backside with an opponent’s shirt, as Ronald Koeman did with Olaf Thon’s when the Holland beat West Germany at Euro 88. They could mention eight World Cups and four European Championships – that’s the collective haul between the sides, which makes this the biggest match in European football.

This will be the first time the two sides have met in a quarter-finals. All their contests have been before or after, like the 0-0 draw in the second group stage of the 1978 World Cup and the 1-1 draw in the opening match of Euro 88. They have never met in qualification as they are both usually among the top seeds. Their biggest match was the World Cup final of 1982. West Germany were public enemies No1-11 after their brazen villainy at the tournament, when they conspired with Austria to eliminate the neutrals’ favourites Algeria and then beat the other neutrals’ favourites, France, on penalties in the semi-final after their goalkeeper Harald Schumacher knocked Patrick Battiston unconscious with an appalling challenge.

Italy were thus installed as neutrals’ favourites by default for the final, and won 3-1 with surprising ease. Antonio Cabrini missed a first-half penalty, but after half-time Paolo Rossi scored his sixth goal in three games – which won him the Golden Boot and the Ballon d’Or – and then Marco Tardelli and Alessandro Altobelli ensured Paul Breitner’s late goal would not even be a consolation.

Tardelli’s brilliant second goal, at the end of a languid counterattack sparked by the magnificent sweeper Gaetano Scirea, is often forgotten because of what followed – the greatest celebration in World Cup history. Tardelli went on an off-the-wall run, shaking his head, screaming and eventually bursting into tears. Iconic feels inadequate to describe it. This is how it feels to score in a World Cup final.

Although Germany have never beaten Italy at a major tournament, that does not mean Italy have never suffered. A 0-0 draw in the final group match of Euro 96 eliminated Arrigo Sacchi’s side on a night of operatic intensity at Old Trafford. Gianfranco Zola’s meek early penalty, easily saved by Andreas Köpke, summed up his frustrating international career, and a late Vladimir Smicer equaliser for the Czech Republic in a 3-3 draw against Russia at Anfield put Italy out.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Italy’s Gianfranco Zola missed an early penalty against Germany as his side drew 0-0 and exited the competition after the group stage. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

The teams were scheduled to meet in the semi-finals of the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, only for one or both to let the side down. They did come together at that stage in 2006 in a match so refreshing and lacking in cynicism that it could have been sepia-tinted. Mexico’s Benito Archundia produced one of the great refereeing performances, allowing some strong challenges early on and setting the tone for a match that never stopped flowing.

It was somehow still goalless after 119 minutes when, following a half-cleared corner, Andrea Pirlo played the pass of his career, reversing it through a gap no one else saw for Fabio Grosso to curl a superb goal. Grosso homaged Tardelli’s celebration before being buried at the bottom of one of the happiest bundles ever seen on a football field.

With the final kick of the match, Alessandro Del Piero – one of three attacking substitutions by Marcello Lippi, with penalties the alternative – scored an exhilarating second on the counterattack. Italy had put the hosts out but after a triumphant tournament and a match of rare goodwill, even most of the German fans went home happy.

And so to 2012, the most recent competitive meeting. Germany may never have been stronger favourites for a match against Italy. They had won their previous 15 competitive matches, a world record, whereas Italy had won only one of their three group games at the tournament and had needed penalties to beat a limited England in the quarter-finals. Germany also had two extra days off but their performance was peculiarly listless and Italy won more comfortably than the 2-1 scoreline suggested. Both goals came from Mario Balotelli, the second a blistering drive.

Germany have had some success against Italy in friendlies, most recently with a 4-1 win in Munich in March. Overall, however, Italy lead in the head-to-head: 15 wins to eight, with 10 draws. The rest of the world might be terrified of Germany but Italy are the bogeyman’s bogeyman.