Germany's greatest football victory was thrown into doubt yesterday following allegations the entire West German side that won the 1954 World Cup final in Switzerland were given performance-enhancing drugs.

The three surviving players as well as the German Football Association (DFB) have denied the allegations, made by ARD public television, calling the claims "annoying and outrageous".

However, the allegation, dubbed the "most monstrous allegation in football" by one newspaper, could tarnish forever one of Germany's most cherished popular memories.

The 3-2 rain-soaked victory against Hungary in the Swiss city of Berne represented the symbolic return of post-war West Germany to European society and provided the founding legend the country had been waiting for that eventually kicked off their economic miracle.

A popular film, The Miracle of Berne, was released in recent months, creating huge renewed interest in the match and awakening the long-forgotten memories of an entire generation.

The doping story emerged after ARD tracked down Walter Brönnimann, the former groundsman of the Berne stadium where the final was played.

He said: "After the final match I found the empty vials in the [locker-room] drains." When he handed the vials over, he said, he was asked to keep quiet about it.

The former team doctor, Dr Franz Loogen, 84, said he gave the players injections of vitamin C and glucose.

Harald Stenger, the president of the DFB, said it was "way off the mark" to call it doping, and that the football authority approved the injections at the time "as a means of helping the players regenerate".

A leading sports physician said vitamin C is not a banned substance because it does not enhance performance.

Horst Eckel, a surviving player, confirmed he received injections but said no performance-enhancing drugs were involved.

"I received injections . . . \ it annoys and enrages me that 50 years later something like this is being stirred up. We didn't know what the word 'doping' meant at all," he said.

DFB president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder was in a similar mood yesterday, saying: "You can't celebrate an anniversary in Germany without people digging around looking for something negative. I assume that everything was perfectly legal."

A member of the 1954 Swiss organising committee told a newspaper he found it "rather strange" that the German side received injections before the game.

The health of the players deteriorated drastically in the months after the triumphant return to West Germany: eight of the team got sick, three were diagnosed with jaundice, and two died later of cirrhosis of the liver. Doctors suggested the illnesses were more likely the result of the use of unsterilised syringes than banned substances.

This didn't stop the captain of the losing Hungarian side, Ferenc Puskas, suggesting in 1957 that the jaundice outbreak showed that "not everything was quite right" with the winning German side. His remarks caused outrage in Germany and led the DFB to ban him from all stadiums in West Germany, a ban that was only lifted in 1964 when he apologised for his remarks.

There is no way of proving or disproving the allegation: sports drug testing was only introduced in 1967 after the death of British cyclist Tom Simpson during the Tour de France.