Reviews and Comments

Essential for every fan of German football

This book details the first 120 or so years of football in Germany, from the first school clubs in the 1880s to the 2002 World Cup. Hesse's style is witty, at times dryly humorous, and never boring. The 2003 revised edition opens and closes with Fritz Walter: first, on the fateful day in Bern; last, with a poignant tribute from Miroslav Klose.

Hesse doesn't gloss over either of the World Wars, nor does he sanitize the actions of the DFB at either time. Some of the clubs acted admirably; others less so.

History has shown some of Hesse's predictions in the final chapter to be true. German national team fans are more than happy to field a team with "a bunch of funny-sounding names"--the 2010 team in South Africa had eleven players who could have played for another country, like Mesut Özil, Sami Khedira, naturalized citizen Cacau, plus Klose, Lukas Podolski, and others.

One prediction that was clearly forward-thinking in 2002/03 but looks naive now is that Turkey's accession to the EU was imminent (and would make the matter of citizenship of German Turks easier to deal with, since the EU has somewhat fluid citizenship rules).

If you're a fan of the Bundesliga or the German NT, you need to read this book. It's worth the effort (and expense) of tracking down a copy, if you haven't a Kindle.