Matchdays

Through the life story of Heinz Hoher, player, coach, manager, scout and sports director, Ronald Reng tells the dramatic story of the rise of the Bundesliga over the last fifty years since it was founded in 1963. During that period, football has grown from a game where a club's directors, puffing on cigars, would join the players in their dressing room at half time, to today's highly paid environment, where Red Bull are trying to break into one of the most successful sporting brands in the world.
From a country struggling to cope with the Nazi legacy in the 1960s, Germany has emerged as an economic and sporting powerhouse of Europe. Matchdays recreates the daily life of professional footballers from a different era, when match-fixing, doping and even guns all played their part in the training ground. Hoher himself spent two decades as a manager, once icing up the pitch at his ground to get a game cancelled, and making his living playing cards after he was sacked from the sport he loves.
Already a major bestseller and award-winning book in Germany, Matchdays reveals the truth behind the rise of German football and is sure to fascinate anyone interested in understanding a nation and its rise to the top of the sporting ladder.

Ronald Reng is a leading sports writer in Germany. His first book published in the UK, A Life Too Short, won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize in 2011.