In September 1986, following the collision of two ships a few miles off the coast in the North Sea (leaving one, a medium sized passenger ferry, stranded on a sandbank) Pelé was left alone for what felt like the first time in decades. Few knew he was there at all and even they’d now disappeared. …
Category Archives: sport
Oskar Kosche’s Job
Foto by Stefanie Fiebrig at textilvergehen You just call on me, brother, when you need a handWe all need somebody to lean on As his teammates wheeled away having secured the unlikeliest of victories, a goal that the Unioner will talk about for a generation, Andreas Luthe didn’t join in. He had been at fault …
Union Berlin’s past, and Union Berlin’s future
As I cycle along Wilheminenhofstrasse, the Indian summer’s sun on my back, the wind coming off the Spree across to the north, the first thing that hits me is the little things, the minutest of details that have changed on the iconic, industrial revolution era yellow brickwork of the Transformatorenwerk. There’s new tags painted up …
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The Pimenow’s and the Landvoigt’s Brothers
Given what they were about to do, four men that looked less like identical mountainsides than they really should, sat in two identical boats, ill suited to anything other than flying across still water at great speed. Neither pair looked at the other. They didn’t have to. The Pimenows were as aware of the Landvoigts …
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Sebastian Andersson’s Goals
I interviewed Sebastian Andersson last year for Textilvergehen, only a day or two after the fire that started in a fridge in the main stand so catastrophically damaged the building. Workers ripped plasterboard unceremoniously off the walls with claw hammers as I waited. They pulled out mile after mile of wiring. It was a mess. …
Jürgen May’s Trainers
He wished he could be in control of his own destiny. But Jürgen May, one of the fastest men in the world, was utterly powerless. His life in the hands of a guy he barely knew. Wedged L shaped into the hollowed out cavity of a ludicrous American car. Preying that the border guards wouldn’t …
Neven Subotic’s Caveat
When he was the figurehead of a peculiar revolutionary movement sweeping through Corinthians football club in the late 1970s, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, MD, used to invite other people, non-footballers, to come and talk with the squad on Fridays before a game. For Brazilian footballers were traditionally sequestered away in the …
Helmut Recknagel’s Nerves
Helmut Recknagel never said what it was that made him go back home to Thuringia from a cold, bright day in Bavaria in January, 1956. He’d been jumping off mountains for half his life. He’d grown up in the looming shadow of Germany’s first ever ski-jumping slope. And this was his first big chance to …
Bahman Foroutan’s Speech
He didn’t wear a tie. He said they were for conservatives and if there was one thing he certainly wasn’t it was a conservative. A conservative wouldn’t have driven a crappy little car from Asia across Europe. Wouldn’t have revelled in the uprising of Paris in 1968. Wouldn’t have taken on the Iranian authorities when …
The Longest Jump in the World
Carl Lewis hadn’t lost a long-jump competition in ten years. He had won 65 in a row. His run-up was a study in technical perfection. His head still, his hands flattened, cutting through the air in high sweeps to his left and right. He rarely looked at the board as he hit it. He didn’t …
Jacob Sweetman 