While mainstream football recovered from Euro 2012 smaller teams, i.e. completely unknown to most football writers, started their Champions League 2012/13 campaign with the preliminary round on July 3. Since then two rounds of qualifying matches as well as two play-off rounds have been played. Red Bull Salzburg will miss out on Europe The biggest…
The Seventies in German football history are dominated by discussion of the team that have won the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup. On course for their triumph against Holland, West Germany had to face East Germany for the one and only time. It was we against us. However, there was more to…
Monday last week Germany grieved for Timo Konietzka, who died aged 73 of cancer. Friedhelm as was his real name was the first ever goalscorer of the newly established Bundesliga in 1963 when his team Borussia Dortmund lost away at SV Werder Bremen 2:3. He opened the scoring after just 58 seconds. He finished the…
It appears that after Michael Ballack has been the last player from East Germany playing for the German national team and who also held the captain’s arm band and for a number of years has been Germany’s best player.Today Toni Kroos is the only one with roots in the former GDR. There used to be…
Leipzig, city of heroes it is often referred to. The credit is due and well deserved as the city was the cradle from which the East German ‘velvet revolution’ began and spread across the GDR in 1989. In football however, the city resembles a working station, a lab, which experiments with football and produces new…