HELD IN THE FELICITOUS WARMTH that blessed the afternoon of 15 May 2004, as Arsenal came from behind to defeat Leicester City 2-1 at Highbury, many thousands lined the stands of the…
Tag: germany
ANDRÉ SCHÜRRLE EMBARKED ON A POWERFUL, driving run down the left wing, and lifted a hopeful ball towards the six-yard box, picking out the awaiting Mario Götze. The substitute immaculately controlled the…
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. With just eight games remaining of the 1968-69 Bundesliga season, 1. FC Nürnberg parted company with their unpredictable, often volatile, yet metronomically successful coach Max Merkel. It…
This feature is part of The Masterminds FOOTBALL MANAGEMENT IS A RUTHLESS PROFESSION. The prerequisites for managing a professional team in Germany, a country known for producing excellent football, players, coaches and…
German sporting dominance was often viewed with an air of suspicion on the British Isles, thanks to World War sentimentality, relative economic strength, and historical state-sponsored doping for political gain by the…
The tenure of Pep Guardiola at German giants Bayern Munich will be remembered for a number of things: the dominance on the ball, the switches in emphasis from central penetration to wing superiority,…
With 404 goals for Hamburg and 43 for the national team, German star Uwe Seeler has every right to be labelled as one of the greatest players of all-time
“Dortmund stands for attacking football. That’s what I feel comfortable with. We will defend a lot and attack a lot. I enjoy that and the fans enjoy that,” Thomas Tuchel said at…
ONE OF THE great misfortunes of being a professional athlete is that your biggest failures are inevitably caught on camera. The ubiquity of media coverage for modern-day sport is a double-edged sword:…
When England played Germany in 1938, many expected a cordial battle between the two old foes. What followed has gone down in infamy and shame
THE DATE IS 7 July 1974 in a packed Olympiastadion in Munich. With the scoreboard showing 1-0 in favour of the dominant Total Footballers from the Netherlands, Bernd Hölzenbein latches onto the…
BERLIN: AUGUST 1961. An already fractious relationship between the Allied powers and the Soviet Union descended into chaos and crisis as the Soviet-controlled government of East Germany erected a makeshift wall along the…
MARCEL REIF, the best-known German football commentator in recent decades, published a book in 1996 in which he and other authors wrote down their impressions of the European Championship tournament that took…
IT IS FRIGHTENING the rate at which our childhood heroes are retiring from football – slowly descending away from the turf, slipping out from the present and into a deep-sea of nostalgia…
If you’ll forgive me for veering momentarily towards the preposterously pretentious, we must briefly visit the school of aesthetics. The philosophy of art and its borderless study of beauty and taste may…
Some of the best football teams in history have fallen just short of World Cup glory. The Mighty Magyars of Hungary were widely considered the best team of the era when they…
During his still-short managerial career, Pep Guardiola has coached many modern-day legends, including Carles Puyol, Andrés Iniesta, Xavi, Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi. But there’s only one man he’s ever labelled as “the…
The fortunes of football clubs inevitably wax and wane over the years – some erratically, others less so. Promotions, relegations glory and despair are the spices that combine to produce the fare enjoyed,…