Matchdays
The Hidden Story of the Bundesliga
1st Edition
Published on 9. April 2015
448 pages
978-1-4711-3649-8 (ISBN)
Description
The enormous success of German football is envied around the world. The national team won the 2014 World Cup in style, while the Bundesliga offers an alternative model through its fan-friendly set-up, terraces and low ticket prices. In Matchdays: The Hidden Story of the Bundesliga, award-winning author Ronald Reng takes a unique approach to explain the history and peculiarities of German football. He follows the tracks of a journeyman footballer, Heinz Hoher, who has been in the Bundesliga all his life, from the first day of its existence in 1963 until now, as a player, manager, sports director and youth coach.
We see through Hoher's story the wider picture of how German football, and even German society, developed from the ruins of the Nazi era to become the football and economic powerhouse of today. Born in 1939, Hoher became the small-town hero of Bayer 04 Leverkusen, a stylish winger and the first to let his hair grow like the Beatles. He witnessed the big match-fixing affairs of the seventies, fought in vain the temptations of so many managers - alcohol and gambling - and realised that, even at 75, his real addiction is still the game.
Matchdays does for German football what David Winner's Brilliant Orange did for Dutch football.
We see through Hoher's story the wider picture of how German football, and even German society, developed from the ruins of the Nazi era to become the football and economic powerhouse of today. Born in 1939, Hoher became the small-town hero of Bayer 04 Leverkusen, a stylish winger and the first to let his hair grow like the Beatles. He witnessed the big match-fixing affairs of the seventies, fought in vain the temptations of so many managers - alcohol and gambling - and realised that, even at 75, his real addiction is still the game.
Matchdays does for German football what David Winner's Brilliant Orange did for Dutch football.
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Book
03/2016
Simon & Schuster Ltd
€32.37
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Person
Ronald Reng is a leading sports writer in Germany. His first book published in the UK, A Life Too Short, won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize in 2011.
Content
- Intro
- Half-title page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- 15 February 1976: Sheet-ice in the Penalty Box
- 1963: A Lift-share into the Bundesliga
- Year Zero: The Landlord's Team
- Meanwhile, Still in Year Zero: The Secretary Plays Disc-jockey
- The 1960s: 'Motorscooterbabe'
- From 1963 back to 1944: Memories
- Still the 1960s: Cold
- 1966: The Men and the Women
- 1968: Heroes for a Day
- 1968-1971: On the Other Side of the Touchline
- 6 June 1971: Real Friends
- After 1971: After the Scandal
- The 1970s - And that Feeling in your Head: Those Were the Days, My Friend
- 30 November 1974: Here Come the Women
- The Later 1970s: Unrelegationable
- The End of the 1970s: Is it Really Time to Go?
- The Fabulous 1970s No More: Notes on the Possibilities of Failure
- 1980-1983: No more long hair blowing in the wind
- October 1984: Rebellion!
- 9 June 1985: Only One Direction: Forward
- The 1980s: Please, Entertain Us
- The End of the 1980s: The Right Man in the Wrong Job
- 17 May 1990: One Single Moment
- The Early 1990s: Ways to Try Keeping on Living
- In the Midst of the 1990s: The Bundesliga Claims it's Modern, Now
- 17 October 1996: The Break
- At the Turn of the Millennium: The Unbearable Discovery of Zonal Marking
- 1999-2002: His Boys
- The Noughties: Goose Pimples
- 2010 and After: Double Knots For Ever
- 50 Years in the Bundesliga: Always Higher, Always Höher
