Literary Football Booklets  Relationship Status: Complicated

In stark contrast to the Football World Cup, which gets bigger every time, there are publications from two publishers that prove the saying: small but mighty!

Since 2023, Voland & Quist has been publishing its series Ikonen (Icons). The series, which now comprises more than ten “little volumes that, thanks to their slim format, fit into any referee’s shirt pocket”, focuses on legends from the world of football. Some are global stars such as Maradona, Messi or Klinsmann, while others are club legends, particularly from East Germany.

In these mostly fictional texts, the authors explore aspects of their footballing socialisation. In 2025, Barbi Marković’s Piksi-Buch (Book on Piksi) was awarded Football Book of the Year. Jury member Danny Neidel described its deeply personal coming-of-age story as “a dribble against expectations”.

A Goblin-like Dribbling Wizard

Torsten Schulz, novelist and screenwriter, has now added a volume to the series, devoted to the anarchic dribbling wizard Günter “Jimmy” Hoge, “a small, lively, childlike, goblin-like character”, as Schulz describes him in an interview with rbbKultur.

In Kindheit mit Jimmy oder Die Kunst zu dribbeln (Childhood with Jimmy, or The Art of Dribbling), the legendary winger, who played for 1. FC Union Berlin between 1966 and 1970, becomes both a projection screen and an fictional conversation partner for the author, who was born in East Berlin in 1959. As a child, he would go to the Stadion An der Alten Försterei (Stadium at the old forester's house) with his father and stepfather, who initially could not stand one another but were ultimately brought together by their shared love of the club.

After one match, the boy walks onto the pitch – something that was still possible in those days – and suddenly finds Jimmy standing beside him. What follows are imagined conversations with his idol. Jimmy becomes all the more important because the boy feels overlooked by his parents and stepfather. He regularly gives them school marks for the way they treat him – mostly not very good ones – and explains why:

Dribbling as a Way of Life

Alongside these personal anecdotes, the book also touches on social and political themes. Union Berlin is portrayed as the club of workers and nonconformists, standing in contrast to the other two Berlin clubs in the East German top division: ASK Vorwärts Berlin, the army sports club, and BFC Dynamo Berlin, associated with the police and Stasi (an abbreviation of Ministerium für Staatssicherheit / Ministry for State Security). Receiving far less state support, Union is the underdog, a yo-yo club repeatedly moving between promotion and relegation.

The art of dribbling can also be read metaphorically, as a way of navigating life in East German society. Yet, as with dribbling itself, it doesn’t always work out; one often gets stopped by an opponent. The same happened to Jimmy Hoge. After an act of misconduct – having consumed a considerable amount of alcohol, he sang the West German national anthem, the song of the “class enemy”, in a pub in 1970 – he was denounced to the Stasi and subsequently banned from practising his profession. For the boy who grows up to become a writer, however, Jimmy remains a lifelong companion, albeit an occasional one: The next title in the Ikonen series will be Birgit Prinz. Das Mädchen und die Siegerin (Birgit Prinz: The Girl and the Winner) by Daniela Böhle.

Nostalgic, Magical, Critical

Even smaller in size than the Voland & Quist booklets are those published by Lampe Verlag, founded only in 2025. With their A6 format, they might easily slip out of any shirt pocket in the heat of the game. Fortunately, the publisher’s concept is to issue several booklets on a particular theme together in a miniature slipcase. Among its first titles is a football-themed slipcase containing four booklets. In his story Der Fußball, in den ich mich verliebte (The Football I Fell in Love With), Benedict Wells indulges in a measure of nostalgia as he recalls his initiation into the world of football during the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Yet the text does not remain merely romantic or wistful. Reflecting on the rapid commercialisation of the sport, Wells characterises his present-day relationship with football as: “Relationship status: complicated.”

In her essay Politik, ja bitte! (Politics, Yes Please!), Anne Rabe focuses more directly on the present, addressing issues such as sportswashing and the pursuit of profit. Given the entanglement of sport and politics, she argues that politics belongs in the stadium.

Saša Stanišić’s Was hinter Gottes Füßen gespielt wird (What Is Played Behind God’s Feet) takes readers back to the 1990s and the Bosnian War. During a ceasefire, a football match played between the opposing sides briefly appears more important than the struggle for life and death.

In Ein Mädchenmärchen (A Fairytale for Girls), Michaela Maria Müller uses wit and subtle magical realism to explore the differences between women’s and men’s football.

These compact book boxes are a brilliant idea and beautifully designed. There is something to suit even those uninterested in sport, such as the collection Im Bett (In Bed) featuring four “stories read while lying down”. A word of warning, however: “lying in bed is not necessarily relaxing, nor is it always voluntary.”

July 2026