Through Gritted Teeth #43: Mehmet Scholl
October 24, 2011 § Leave a Comment
by Niklas Wildhagen
Growing up in Germany I lived through an era of industrious, hard working, unspectacular ball players. Andi Brehme, Lotthar Matthaus, Klaus Augenthaler, all of them were decent and internationally respected footballers. But nobody seemed to love them, except Germans. Their way of playing football was team-oriented, and if you were looking for the spectacular you simply wouldn’t find it when those players were on the pitch. As Uli Hesse notes in his brilliant book Tor!, the 80s and 90s of German football were successful, but the vigor and the youthful swagger of the 70s when players like Gunter Netzer and Paul Breitner played had gone. « Read the rest of this entry »
