“Hate drives the football business. They call this hate love.”
Short review: The recent election for Football Book of the Year was extraordinary. On the one hand, because it was the first time a woman had won in this category. On the other hand, because the award winner Barbi Marković has neither written a tome nor dealt with a popular topic. What sets the almost hundred-page “Piksi Book” apart is its originality in theme and tone.
The author, who was born in Belgrade and lives in Vienna, links growing up as a stadium visitor and writer with discord and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Her eighth birthday in 1989, which she had to spend with her socialist-minded father Slobodan in the almost empty football stadium, and the 1990 World Cup quarter-final against Argentina form the framework of this autofictional work.
It is written in the style of a brisk football report. In it, the author even classifies her own writing ironically: “Barbi Marković, that’s unbelievable, in the first chapter, in the 6th minute of reading, such a hit (. . .) was written.” The reporter is right! The way she manages to describe the fan culture characterized by bully behavior in short sentences is also powerful.
“There is a tension in the modern game: Is football currently a social benefit for humanity?”
Short review: Watching football is entertainment, and modern football is more entertaining than ever. You can switch off, take a breather, and admire what the best conjure up on the lawn: a bit of escapism in a complex world. But sometimes, as an observer, you’re taken aback when the best play: Is it really supposed to be that way – that the rest of the football world has absolutely no chance against a few big clubs? That clubs are used politically by rich states from the Middle East? Doesn’t that distort competition?
Football reporter Miguel Delaney has clever answers to many questions. He traces how billionaires have shaped the world’s most popular sport, from Roman Abramovich to the Emir of Qatar. It’s just a shame that the translation into German isn’t quite as fluid as the passing game of the Champions League winners. (Tammo Blomberg)
For: Those for whom football is more than escapism
“It resulted in violent and crashing dunks.”
Title: Philipp Dembowski: Basketball Culture. Noble. Hamburg 2025. 512 pages. 28 euros.
Short review: This book is not one of those sports books as we know them, not a chronological treatise of history and not a statistic formulated in words. This sets the pace of the book. Tack, tack, tack – it happens in quick succession.
This fits the nature of this game, but also comes at the expense of the depth of some chapters. But how else could a ride through basketball history, starting with the first game ever played on December 21, 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts, be mastered? (Michael Wittershagen)
For: Anyone who wants to understand why basketball shapes fashion and music like no other sport
“When I bet, I feel excited and alive.”
Title: Thomas Melchior: In the fight against gambling addiction and betting mafia. Publishing house Die Workshop, Bielefeld 2025. 224 pages. 22 euros.
Short review: Thomas Melchior’s downfall began with a bet on FC Bayern. Ten euros to win, one euro in profit, that was a ten percent return in 45 minutes, as the trained banker calculated.
13 years of gambling later, Melchior, who had long been addicted to gambling, had to go to prison for three years for theft, fraud and embezzlement. He deceived relatives, friends and companies in order to place a total of 800,000 euros on bets. His life was a hunt for money and kicks and an escape from reality, it is retold almost breathlessly.
Today, Melchior fights against betting providers’ machinations, exposes data scouts, stands in front of football stadiums to denounce betting sponsors and warn people about gambling addiction. As a crash story and an explanation, his book is a double benefit for readers. (Thomas Klemm)
For: Sports consumers and anyone who gambles with money
„That is how Ferrari was born“
Short review: This illustrated book in the color rosso is a statement: 688 large-format pages, almost six kilograms, 125 euros. The Taschen publishing house pays homage to the Ferrari brand, and although the work is opulent and contains many previously unpublished photos, much of the history of the Italian luxury brand is only touched on.
Nevertheless, little is left out. And everyone quickly understands why Ferrari is not just a car brand, but a cultural asset. And what Ferrari does to people. With those behind the wheel and those for whom such a car remains a dream forever. (Michael Wittershagen)
For: artists and chroniclers
“You can close your eyes and surrender to the music.”
Title: Maximilian Probst and Ursina Tossi (eds.): The philosophy of dancing. Mairisch Verlag. Hamburg 2025. 231 pages. 24 euros.
It is physical self-reflection, creates a feeling of cohesion or is an archive for memories. Theory meets dance. Judith Butler shows up at the dance performance. What happens when the dancers’ body outlines and movements overlap? Why can the binary idea of gender identity be broken down in dance? Then we dance into the avant-garde. Here dance was seen as an expression of radical freedom.
For choreographer Isadora Duncan, the body is an expression of the soul, for philosopher Gilles Deleuze it is a living archive that pauses in the present. Today dance opens up an empathetic, resonant space. In the club we not only play with our own bodies, but also synchronize ourselves with the crowd. And sometimes we even briefly lose our balance. (Stefanie Sippel)
For: Dance enthusiasts and theorists
“Sport is a means of perpetuating the myth of male dominance.”
Title: Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford: Open Play. The Case for Feminist Sport. Reaction Books Ltd. London 2025. 206 pages. 21.50 euros.
Short review: Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford show why women’s sports are a problem in themselves – because they are a construct of the patriarchy. Separation in sports is another way to tell women why they should expect less from society. Instead, they promote a feminist sport.
One that doesn’t continue to strengthen the existing structures, but rather shakes up the tried and tested. They write against sexist myths, the supposed physical weakness and fragility of women. And they make us understand that this system maintains male power by controlling female bodies.
A system designed for men rarely serves those oppressed within it. So it’s no wonder that women are paid less. Bekker and Mumford create a picture of sport that is open to everyone, where barriers are removed and everyone can feel like a human being. (Stefanie Sippel)
“Today, functional arenas are being built at motorway junctions on greenfield sites.”
Title: Hardy Grüne, Zeitspiel: Cult Stadiums. The most beautiful German football pitches. The workshop. Bielefeld 2025. 256 pages. 39.90 euros.
Short review: In August 1964, TSV Marl-Hüls had a stadium suitable for the Bundesliga. 35,000 people found space there, some found shelter under a roof that had never existed before: a cantilevered structure that was otherwise used primarily in bridge construction.
Those responsible in Marl dreamed of the Bundesliga back then, but since the 1970s they have been permanently swallowed up by amateur football. After all: The Jahnstadion was placed under monument protection in 2022. Stories like these make up the book that Hardy Grüne and his colleagues from “Zeitspiel” magazine put together. About stadiums that have been forgotten and are only known to those in the know. The authors take you across the football republic.
From the VfL Fosite Helgoland, which plays where the North Sea begins, to the Camper Höhe stadium in Stade with its more than 100-year-old grandstand, the Uhlenkrug stadium in Essen, where more than 45,000 spectators gathered for the international match Germany against Luxembourg in 1951, the Weinaupark stadium in Zittau with Germany’s oldest wooden grandstand to the Dreisamstadion in Freiburg, which is not only with the first The republic’s bendable floodlight masts made headlines. Once you start leafing through this book, you keep turning the pages. (Michael Wittershagen)
This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
“It is essential for the future of climbing to protect the environment and preserve our lands.”
Title: Ximo Abadía: Climbing. Prestel Publishing. Munich 2025. 64 pages. 24 euros.
Short review: He drew them all: the South Tyrolean Reinhold Messner with a full head of hair and a smile on his face, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary with his Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the American Lynn Hill, the Spanish Josune Bereziartu, the Czech Adam Ondra. The Spaniard Ximo Abadía, an award-winning illustrator, has put a brightly colored foray through the history of climbing on paper.
A non-fiction book for children who want to see who the faces of this sport are, who want to recognize how the fourteen eight-thousanders differ, and who want to know what an expansion dowel, what magnesia or a clamping wedge is. Anyone who leafs through the book feels like they can feel the freedom it describes. (Michael Wittershagen)
