‘Rahn should shoot from the background. Rahn shoots! Goal! Goal! Goal!’ These words spoken by radio commentator Herbert Zimmermann in the heat of the moment when Helmut Rahn had scored Germany’s third goal during the World Cup final 1954 in Berne are familiar to many Germans and have become cultural icons like Kenneth Wolstenholme’s words…
The story of German could have come quite differently, had not one incident decided the fate of the two Munich clubs, 1860 and Bayern, respectively. As a youngster, Franz Beckenbauer played for a small Munich club in his neighbourhood, Giesing. It was his intention to move to TSV 1860 Munich at some point in his…
There is a new president of FIFA and it is the same as the old: Gianni Infantino. The vote was more or less a proclamation of a new king or emperor, less a democratic process. Though, whoever thinks FIFA acts democratically may think twice. Afterwards, the president gave insights into his motivation to stand for…
Most people will be familiar with Orwell’s famous statement about football being another means of war which he postulated in an article in The Tribune in 1945 after Dynamo Moscow came to the UK to play a number of friendly games. Orwell’s own experiences of the game are quite different, though they originate from a…
There are games that are embedded in football folklore, even more than thirty years later. One of these games happened Krefeld, a town not known for its footballing exploits. Yet, in the 1980s the local team FC Bayer 05 Uerdingen were a force to be reckoned with. In March 1986 they hosted East German side…
The first days of Euro 2016 already gave enough material for discussion. This is the first in a series of observations from the tournament that’s happening right at my door step. According to which media channel you consume, the Euro 2016 so far has been an orgy of violence and riots or been a festival…
In the previous posts of this series the focus was on the history of FC Magdeburg during the 1970s and early 1990s. Arguably, between 1976 and 1989 almost 13 years have passed without major crises. The 90s however, saw the club tumbling from crisis to crisis. This decade began with a huge breakup in East…
1964 – 1974 – 1994 – 2004 – 2014 These 5 dates stand for important dates in the history of FC Magdeburg’s history, one of East Germany’s most popular and successful clubs, before and after 1990. After 1990 with an altered omen. In a series of articles, An Old International recounts the history of ‘The…
German top flight football experiences a boom and the foreign media have taken note of it. This post however, looks at three East German clubs which find themselves in one division: the Regionalliga, the fourth division, away from the limelight. All three of them have managed to reach a European Cup Final. Three Finalists When…
[typography font=”Alike” size=”14″ size_format=”px”]Juri Schl