An Interview with Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger

It’s funny that on the day I fin­ished Rafael Honigstein’s book, the great Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger returned my ques­tions for an inter­view that Rafael had helped facil­i­tate. The last chap­ter of the book, which is very pen­sive and earnest, incor­po­rates with how Ger­mans deal with World War II. In it he praises the sense of humor of most Britons and laments on how far behind Ger­mans can some­times be in the cat­e­gory, espe­cially self-deprecation. Yet, Rafael helped me with gar­ner an inter­view with a man who prob­a­bly could have been as good a come­dian as he is a writer. I hope you enjoy the inter­view as much as I did, as Uli talks to me about his books, the league and his club.

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I’ve heard rumor of a new book. Any infor­ma­tion about it?

“I’ve writ­ten three books now, one in Eng­lish and two in Ger­man, but I don’t intend to let this become a habit. In fact, the third and to date last one only came out because it was a col­lec­tion of weird but true sto­ries which I had already writ­ten and pub­lished in var­i­ous places. I’d have never had the time to write it from scratch.”

When it comes to Tor!, how long did it take you to research the book? I have to say, that it astounded me how much detail was in that book: includ­ing Nazi flags as uni­forms, Puma vs Adi­das, club nam­ing struc­tures, to name a few, besides the his­tory of the league/s.

“It took almost exactly eleven months to write the book. Not so much because Eng­lish isn’t my native lan­guage but because I had to try this and that until I knew how to struc­ture the nar­ra­tive, what to leave out, what to put in, whom to fea­ture promi­nently, whom to dis­card. In fact, what you call ‘details’ is pretty much the result of all that tin­ker­ing. Because you can’t have a thor­ough and com­pre­hen­sive his­tory with­out many seem­ingly smaller sto­ries and lots of peo­ple — oth­er­wise the read will be a drag. Which is a long-winded way of say­ing that I didn’t really research things such as that adi­das ver­sus Puma para­ble with an eye towards the book. I knew the story, have known it for a long time. The ques­tion was: is this the kind of story that will help the book by keep­ing it lively? I decided it was. In some sim­i­lar cases, I decided against using a cer­tain story, some of them quite intrigu­ing. So, writ­ing: eleven months. Research: my life as a foot­ball fan.”

Hav­ing cov­ered East Ger­man his­tory, what do you think it will take for the region to start chal­leng­ing at the high­est level. It’s almost 20 years on and we now face a sea­son with­out one East­ern side. Is this the chasm you spoke of and is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

“Excel­lent ques­tion. Will you allow me to cop out by say­ing that Hertha did chal­lenge last sea­son? Berlin, after all, is east of, say, Magde­burg or Leipzig. But I guess you really mean East Ger­man as in ‘from the ter­ri­tory of the for­mer GDR’. In that case, I have no idea. First of all, I regret to say, it takes money. You may have heard that Red Bull has begun to invest in a small club from Leipzig. This annoys many fans, who feel that here’s an upstart threat­en­ing to over­take the two tradition-laden clubs, Sach­sen and Loko­mo­tive, solely because of money. But finances are very impor­tant. In fact, finances are the pri­mary rea­son the big GDR clubs, the Dynamos and Madge­burg, are lan­guish­ing. It was all a mess when the Wall fell. The East­ern clubs got raided, lost the best play­ers, and were then also taken to the clean­ers by con men.”

How did you come to be not only a foot­ball jour­nal­ist, but a his­tor­i­cal foot­ball jour­nal­ist: after all besides the book, you gave us the SV Alsen­born piece, Brunswick/Jagermeister, Hennes the goat.

“I guess what you mean is that I’m not a beat writer, not some­one who reg­u­larly cov­ers a team or a league for a news­pa­per, but what is known as a fea­ture or mag­a­zine jour­nal­ist plus a colum­nist. Well, it’s because that’s what I like best. Trans­fer rumours and other spec­u­la­tions just bore me. And I have no idea why inter­views with active play­ers and coaches are so cen­tral to today’s sport jour­nal­ism, as the vast, vast major­ity of them are utterly devoid of any­thing noteworthy.”

And what was the most inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal piece you came upon dur­ing your years as a journalist?

“You mean the story that fas­ci­nated me the most? Either the 1919 Black Sox scan­dal or Jackie Robin­son break­ing the colour bar­rier in 1947. In case you’re ask­ing about a Ger­man story and/or a foot­ball story, I guess the his­tory of the Dassler fam­ily, the adi­das ver­sus Puma war, indeed is an incred­i­ble tale — and a great mystery.”

Bay­ern Munich: odds-on favorites or over­rated? Who chal­lenges them?

“Despite Wolfsburg’s awe­some form in the sec­ond half of the sea­son, the past cam­paign was more or less thrown away by Bay­ern. They won’t let this hap­pen again, which doesn’t mean they’ll def­i­nitely win it, it just means they are the favourites. Wolfs­burg, Ham­burg and Stuttgart should be there or there­abouts again. And for some rea­son I think Werder will be much improved.”

Hof­fen­heim: are they here to stay or will they have sec­ond sea­son syndrome?

“It’ll be both tougher and eas­ier for them, as both the eupho­ria that car­ried them and the hatred they often encoun­tered should sub­side. Which means they will be more of a nor­mal side this year. So: no sen­sa­tional win­ning run but no pro­longed slump, either.”

Which team had the best sum­mer in the trans­fer market?

“Tak­ing every­thing into account, Bay­ern. Yes, they still haven’t solved this prob­lem at right back, but if you get Mario Gomez and Ivica Olic, that’s pretty damn good. And I think los­ing Lucio will prove to be a bless­ing in dis­guise.”

Are Stuttgart good enough to chal­lenge in Europe this year?

“They should be out of their depth in the Cham­pi­ons League, but mak­ing it far in the Europa League is a pos­si­bil­ity. Pro­vided, of course, they get there via the Cham­pi­ons League. Gosh, how com­pli­cated all this has become!”

How long will it take Mag­ath to make Schalke into con­tenders? And you can­not answer never!

“There are two Schalke fans I know who have — inde­pen­dently of each other — told me there isn’t a shadow of a doubt that Schalke will win the league next season.”

How do you feel about Dortmund’s chances this year?

“I don’t think we’ll fin­ish sixth again, but that’s no cat­a­stro­phe. In the span of almost exactly twelve months, we’ve lost two proven goalscor­ers, Mladen Pet­ric and Alex Frei, and have got­ten a bunch of nice lads in return who’ll cover a lot of ground but will rarely score. If we fin­ish in sev­enth, eighth or ninth place, that’s okay with me.”

Are you as enam­oured with Jur­gen Klopp as most?

“Hon­est answer? Yes. I’m aware he could be a com­plete char­la­tan who uses his brains, charisma and looks to con peo­ple into think­ing he’s a good coach when in fact he might be totally use­less. But I’ve come to sus­pect that this is the per­fect job descrip­tion for a foot­ball coach, any­way. On a more seri­ous note, he hasn’t made any obvi­ous blun­der yet and has at the very least man­aged to turn a comatose, blood­less side into a team nobody really wants to play. With­out com­pletely over­haul­ing the per­son­nel. That’s impres­sive.”

Will you be able to hold onto Sub­otic and Kuba this year?

“I don’t worry about Kuba, he lacks con­sis­tency and is not really a key player. But Sub­otic … yes, that’s a prob­lem. The day will come when he fig­ures he’s given Klopp all he owes him. Then he’ll move on.”

What are your thoughts on the wun­derkind Sven Bender?

“At Dort­mund, we deeply dis­trust won­der kids. There was a coach, and we won’t men­tion names, who claimed Chris­t­ian Timm was the great­est tal­ent in all of Ger­many. Before that, we all were pretty sure that Lars Ricken was the most tal­ented player of his gen­er­a­tion. And I was at the ground when an 18-year-old Daniel Simmes scored the Goal of the Year in 1984 against Lev­erkusen. It was a solo across almost the whole of the length of the pitch, prov­ing beyond, er, doubt this was a super­star in the making.”

How do you think Lucas Bar­rios and Rangelov will fit in with the squad? WIll they be ade­quate replace­ment for Frei?

“Like I said, both seem to be guys who are will­ing to track back, cover a lot of ground and help the team. Just like Valdez and Zidan, then. And unlike Pet­ric and Frei, the two we let go. There’s quite obvi­ously a method to this.”

What pieces do you feel that Dort­mund are miss­ing from chal­leng­ing for the title?

“Sorry, did you say ‘title’? You mean as in ‘league title’? Well, er, how’s about 30m Euros?”

An Inter­view with Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger, 4.9 out of 5 based on 8 ratings