Tor!

'without question the most entertaining historical football book ever written' - The Guardian

'In Hesse's capable hands, the history of German football seems more entertaining, unpredictable and scandal-infested than England's' - FourFourTwo

'Beautifully crafted, demolishes myths with the cold-blooded efficiency of a literary Gerd Müller' - The Times

Germany did not have professional players or a national league until the 1960s, yet it became one of the most successful football nations in the world.

Tor! (Goal!) traces the extraordinary story of Germany's club and international football, from the days when it was regarded as a dangerously foreign pastime, through the horrors of the Nazi years, to the postwar triumphs, the World Cup victories, and all the way up to the present day.

Tor! challenges the myth that German football is 'predictable' or 'efficient' and brings to life the fascinating array of characters who shaped it: the betrayed pioneer Walther Bensemann; the enigmatic genius Sepp Herberger; the all-conquering Franz Beckenbauer; the misfit Lothar Matthäus; the coaches reshaping the modern game; and even the radio commentator Herbert Zimmermann, whose ecstatic cries of 'Tor!' greeted the winning goal in the 1954 World Cup final and helped change a whole nation's view of itself.

Fully revised and updated, Tor! is the definitive history of German football.

Auteur

Uli Hesse is an editor at 11Freunde, Germany's biggest football monthly, and has been published on five continents. He is a long-standing contributor to FourFourTwo, the Blizzard and When Saturday Comes and has written more than 400 columns for ESPN FC. His first English-language book, Tor! The Story of German Football, was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, while two of his German books have been nominated for that country's Football Book of the Year prize. In June 2017, he was appointed a member of the German Academy for Football Culture. His book, Building the Yellow Wall: The Incredible Rise and Cult Appeal of Borussia Dortmund, won Football Book of the Year at the 2019 British Sports Book Awards. He lives in Berlin.