Another football book.
And then one more that raves about the past.
Does it have to be that way?
Of course not, but if you are already reading a football book, then this: "Football Blues" by Günter Ortmann surprises with elegant formulations, essayistic excursions and profound thoughts.
It is a book of longing, as casual as it is elegant.
Achim Dreis
Sports editor.
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The author, born in 1945, was a research professor at the University of Witten / Herdecke and allows himself to take a look at his favorite sport. Just as he manages to be addicted to HSV as a child and then be converted to BVB, so he manages to lead from Monty Python to Socrates - the philosopher, not the footballer - to Peter Neururer. And to bring this counter-football of words to the point. Powerful and funny.
Where do you start, where do you stop? Of course, Ortmann also pays homage to the depth of the space from which Günter Netzer came, as is well known. But his considerations do not end at this juncture between football and philosophy. His work pays homage to casualness and elegance. Comes from the organizational theory of the modern game with its increasingly abstruse rules of handball to Shrovetide Football with traditions from the twelfth century: "The murder of the opponent is forbidden".
If the work occasionally loses its linguistic devotion to the beautiful game even in small and small things, the playfulness then tears up again with a break of freedom. A little joke or a quote. Gladly from Willi Lippens. Ortmann generally pays homage to the masters of casualness, Zidane or Iniesta. He praises the pathos of distance as an expression of the casual as opposed to anything dogged. Or even efforts. And he gives Lothar Matthäus another one. With the instep, as it were. The work succeeds in functioning both as a page turner and as a collection of appetizers.
It can be read in one go, with added time and overtime.
It can also be enjoyed as an appetizer.
Like a highlight compilation.
Just open up and indulge.
Laugh and marvel at the ludicrous concatenation of thoughts in the style of a ball relay.
Tiki-taka with words.
From backyard kickers to spotlight world champions and back.
Football blues doesn't complain.
Not about the extreme commercialization of the game, not about the ghost games in the corona pandemic.
It represents. It exposes the whole madness all the more.
But Ortmann just doesn’t let his wistful and sometimes unruly love of beautiful games be taken away.
Günter Ortmann: Football Blues. Edel Books; 191 pages; 19.95 euros.