Remarkably late in Andreas Bernard’s narrow football book, the boys include the fences of their football field for the first time and instead of throwing the ball in again after each crossing of the touchline, play over the fence. This metaphor, which in turn comes from another sport, makes sense to describe the author’s procedure, who, shortly before the publication of his own football book, published another one that he had just published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as detailed as it was mercilessly torn: Martin Suter’s biographical novel about the life of Bastian Schweinsteiger.
If this literature fight were actually a football game, it would have to be a cup game, because Suter apparently plays “in a different league” than Bernard. The question of who comes from which league can be answered in different ways: in categories of book market capital, Suter, whose book quickly topped the Spiegel-Up on the bestseller list, hopelessly superior – in categories of football writing competence, on the other hand, Bernard is a professional who writes about an amateur footballer (himself), while Suter, as an amateur, dares to write to a professional (Schweinsteiger).
The panned by Suters One of you – because that Bernards was by no means the only one – is little to add. Such a hagiographical account results when an author resolves to deviate from the facts if and only if it is “kindly meant,” as he emphasizes in his preface. Apparently, this intention no longer only applies to everyday communication, but even in literature as a license to linguistic arbitrariness. Because the objection is obvious that the reviewer’s standards as a professor of literature are too high: In the last two Novembers I read an eco-thriller by Dirk Rossmann, both of which were also in the Spiegel-was at the top of the bestseller list, and I now consider the drugstore chain owner to be a more gifted writer than Suter, at least as far as this novel is concerned. It is apparently not even clear to him that expressions such as “all three pots” or “sugar flank” are now even used by editors of the Kicker to be curled up.
Plagued by cramps
At best, it is interesting that Suter also retells the difficult times of Schweinsteiger’s career in some detail. In the best passages, there is an idea of the tough everyday life of a professional footballer, especially since one who injured himself so often had to be treated, completed individual training sessions and only gradually found his reliable form again. In this crude recurrence of always similar courses, that doesn’t fit into a developmental novel that otherwise wants the book to be frantic. Just as little as short reports of FC Bayern games against FSV Mainz 05 or Energie Cottbus, sometime on the 12th or 23rd match day of a Bundesliga season, in phases in which – yes, that happened several times in the early phases of Schweinsteiger’s career – qualification for the Champions League was in jeopardy. Unfortunately, the insight into the grueling everyday life that arises at such points is quickly interrupted by, allegedly less boring, reports of lavish parties or the parallel story of Schweinsteiger’s current wife Ana Ivanović.
Andreas Bernard, who apparently has an encyclopedic knowledge of FC Bayern, could probably still remember his games against Energie Cottbus. As a cultural and media scientist, which he is full-time, he is at least as interested in the process of remembering itself. For example, he notes how differently images of important scenes from football games are remembered than they “actually behaved” . Because the comparison with the image archive in Youtube has only been possible for a relatively short time; previously, “false” memories could persist for a long time uncorrected.
The most important subject of Bernard’s book is of course his own football game as a child and teenager in the 1970s and 80s, of which there are only a few photographs anyway. At that time, the author went through teams at a club that was the third most important in Munich at the time (and can therefore easily be identified as FC Wacker, which has meanwhile crashed into the district league). Even more important to him than his career in the club is the everyday improvised game on publicly accessible pitches, the “adventure” first, then the “rubber”. Particular attention is paid to the language of football, such as the countless, locally different names for certain games such as “Danteln”, which is agreed upon if there are not enough players on the pitch for a two-goal match.
To find all of this compelling, you have to combine a great passion for football with a propensity for meta-reflection. If you don’t have that, you’ll still learn more from Bernard than from Suter. In this case, events such as the “fall of the wall” or “9/11” are only evoked in the most banal possible interludes in order to historically locate the heroic story. Bernard, on the other hand, sketches a childhood and youth in an unspectacular outskirts of downtown Munich. The fact that this everyday story is so almost exclusively about football, for example not about girls, and only, towards the end, a little bit about literature – well, that’s certainly not meant to be realistic, but a fictional prerequisite that you have to be able to share while reading .
We went out and played soccer Andreas Bernard Klett-Cotta 2022, 160 S., 20 €
One of you: Bastian Schweinsteiger Martin Suter Diogenes 2022, 384 S., 22 €