This feature is part of A Tale of One City On 13 August 1961, the Berlin Wall was built. It stood for 10,316 days, until it was torn down on 9 November…
Tag: germany
Every good story needs a villain, and who would be a more appropriate subject of football fans’ wrath than a team that crushed its competition thanks to the state’s backing? Winning the…
“YOU, PLAYERS, who in less than a few hours will be hailed as champions by millions of compatriots,” the mayor of Rio de Janeiro proclaimed with boundless pride as he passionately addressed…
IT WAS RB LEIPZIG’S meteoric, energy drink-fuelled rise that brought the Bundesliga’s fabled 50+1 rule to the forefront of football discussions as of late, but both the history and the future of…
FOOTBALL IS A VICIOUS AND FICKLE BUSINESS where clubs must learn to adapt to survive to outdo one another. In order to succeed, there is little room for complacency and one must…
October 3, 1990: the day that East and West Germany reunified. It’s a day celebrated by many, a day in which family members could see each other again after, in some cases,…
FEW FOOTBALLERS IN HISTORY – few individuals, for that matter – have had their sport impact upon their life quite like Gerald Asamoah, though the Germany international was hardly your average footballer.…
Perhaps no man in football history has had as wide an impact on his nation’s game as Franz Beckenbauer, a man synonymous with leadership and success
THE DATE ATOP the newspapers read 28 April 1978. On their back pages, the latest Bundesliga table told of a campaign 33 rounds old, just a day from its conclusion, whose two…
Two years ago, Hamburger SV came within seconds of a very first relegation from the Bundesliga. The Dinosaur, the only club to contest each and every Bundesliga campaign since its inception in…
BODO ILGNER, Andreas Köpke, Oliver Kahn, Jens Lehmann, Manuel Neuer; the list of Germany’s first-choice goalkeepers over the past three decades reads off like a reel of dynastic succession. Not only is…
ON 6 JUNE 2014, Marco Reus’s professional life plunged into darkness. Darkness often touches professional footballers, but for this exceptionally blessed German playmaker, it was a darkness that would come to plague…
DESPITE REACHING THE FINAL, it’s fair to say that the West German team at the 1982 World Cup would scarcely make it onto anyone’s list of most popular international sides. Even in…
IT’S ONLY TWO YEARS SINCE VFL WOLFSBURG finished second to Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga title race. In the same season – 2014/15 – Die Wölfe also won the DFB-Pokal and reached…
In 2014, SC Paderborn 07 faced the likes of Werder Bremen and Mainz in their sole season in the Bundesliga. Fast-forward to three years later and they were competing with the same…
At the very last second, the ball whipped inside the whitewashed wooden stanchion, pinging across the goal into the far side netting with a satisfying ripple. It was a stunning strike from…
FALSE NINE, REGISTA, LIBERO; these are all terms that will undoubtedly be familiar to the typical football enthusiast. As indeed will the players associated with them, the likes of Lionel Messi, Andrea…
Reporting for pre-season training in the summer of 1971, not many at Bayern Munich recognised Gerd Müller. To those even remotely familiar with the career of Der Bomber, this would seem perplexing.…