Tor! The Story of German Football does exactly "what it says on the tin". As the author explains, his aim was to write an entertaining history of the German game. He has certainly achieved his goal, or "tor" as they would say in Germany. Hesse-Lichtenberger sets out to prove that football in Germany is not necessarily the efficient, predictable machine that those of us believing in the German stereotype might think. Again, he succeeds. From the foundation of the game to the present day (and dare I mention the historic 5-1 defeat at the hands of the English in Munich in September 2001), the narrative finds plenty of room to include the quirky, amusing and unexpected. The seemingly curious names of many German club sides are dissected, while the fact that the national side managed to win the 1954 World Cup before the advent of the first professional national league only serves to amaze. The author proclaims his belief that it is people who shape events, and misses no opportunity to investigate the diverse personalities who have made the German game what it is, from the obsession of Herberger to the maverick brilliance of Netzer. The upshot is a wonderfully colourful history, and one that will no doubt surprise even most the avid of Europhile football followers. The latest in the line of recent books in English on European football, Tor!, like a number of German teams of the past, is a clear winner. --Trevor Crowe

Beautifully crafted... demolishes myths with the cold-blooded efficiency of a literary Gerd Muller

Very good... Tor! reveals that German football is more prone to self-doubt than self-promotion.

A model of how history should be written.

A revised and updated paperback edition of Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger's acclaimed history of German football, first published in 2002.

When Rudi Voller led his squad to the 2002 World Cup final, many outsiders despaired of Germany's ability to achieve astonishing results with ordinary players. Tor! (Goal!) traces the origins of that knack back to 1954, when West Germany won the World Cup despite having neither professional players nor a national league. It shows how the virtues instilled by the coaching geniuns Sepp Herberger were subverted by the generation of Franz Beckenbauer and tarnished by that of Lothar Matthaus, then reinvigorated under Voller.

Tor! follows the extraordinary story of Germany

Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger was born in Dortmund, 172 days before the 1966 World Cup final. He is a freelance journalist who writes on football and many other subjects at home and abroad. He has written regularly for top independent football magazine When Saturday Comes since 1996. He live 15 minutes from Borussia Dortmund's ground.

2007-12-25 Do NOT miss!

This is a truly wonderful book. 2nd only in my 40-odd years of sports book reading to John Arlott's Fred.

The author has a light and natural style, which is saying something for a German, as it isn't his native language. Not that you'd ever guess this from his prose, which is dry without being ascerbic, but also builds wonderfully well in the build-up to the 1954 World Cup win.

That's an even better achievement, as Herr Hesse-Lichtenberger wasn't born until 1966! This book is full of information without being in the remotest a statistical litany, and looks at all the underlying passions in German football from its' very beginnings in the 1890's.

It pulls no punches, either with German clubs who were busy expelling Jews months before ordered to do so by Hitler's men, nor with a National side that managed to combine cynical disregard for the spectator with winning at all costs between 1982-1998 on too many important occasions-his thoughts, by the way, not mine.

And, just as an afterthought on quite how good this is, how many ENGLISH sportwriters could fluently write about the Premiership in German?