Tag: WW2

Before Total Football, there was the Wunderteam

Published on by Martyn Green1 Comment

In 1939, Matthias Sindelar was found dead in his Vienna apartment. Sindelar had embarrassed the Nazi authorities less than a year previous, celebrating his goal for an Austrian team against the German side a little too vigorously. He had refused to be a part of the Germany 1938 World Cup squad, which was eliminated in the first round. And he had been on a Gestapo watchlist. Question marks remain, but a blocked chimney was probably the culprit. It was a tragic, if less conspiratorial end to perhaps the greatest player of the 1930s, and his Wunderteam.

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The Death Match

Published on by Martyn Green

When people think of the Nazis and football, most would think of Escape to Victory, the film in which Bobby Moore, Michael Caine and Pele – Prisoners of War – play for the pride of the allies and draw, carried out of the stadium on the shoulders of the oppressed French citizens to a jingoistic, triumphant soundtrack. Fewer people know that it was inspired by a match in the Ukraine between the occupied and the occupiers. What Escape does not show is half the team being executed for defying their conquerors. That is the dark secret of the Death Match. Theoretically.

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