An effen genius

As a rule, the only books drearier than footballing autobiographies, at least in the English-speaking world, are economics textbooks and VS Naipaul novels. (Have any of you, for instance, had the misfortune to read Kevin Phillips’ Second Time Around or Henrik Larsson’s The Autobiography? Christ.)

This dismal state of affairs compares unfavourably with Germany, where the tell-all tome is a hardy annual among the nation’s footballers. Sepp Maier, the legendary goalkeeper of the 1970s, got the ball rolling with the cryptically-titled Who’s Kissing Me Now?. Not to be outdone, one of his successors in the national team, Uli Stein, brought out a book claiming that he had been overlooked at the 1986 World Cup because he didn’t have a contract with Adidas.

The best known of these lurid publications is the explosive Anpfiff by Harald Schumacher (yep, another keeper). I picked up an English-language copy of this in Easons for IR£1 a decade ago. Here’s a sample paragraph, from a chapter titled “Syringes And Sex”:

“I’m not saying the players should have licence to cheat on their wives [during World Cup training camps]. But why shouldn’t the single lads be able to let off steam with a few high-class girls, carefully selected of course? We are not eunuchs.”

And now, continuing the tradition in fine style, we have the former Bayern Munich captain Stefan Effenberg and his stellar new autobiography, Ich Hab’s Allen Gezeigt, or I Showed Them All.

(The title has been mis-translated in various quarters as I’ve Shown It To Everyone, which conjures up a powerful and rather unsettling visual image in my admittedly puerile mind. But I digress.)

To be honest, I have only read some translated extracts, but even these few morsels make Schumacher’s book read like an identikit cut-and-paste job, from the ghostwriter of some semi-faceless artisan like James Beattie or Chris Perry.

Admittedly, this is the fellow who claimed in 1991 that Bayern would win the title because “all the other teams are too stupid” (1991 champions: Kaiserslautern), and who opined last year that unemployed people were too lazy to look for work. Even by those impressive standards of foot-in-mouth disease, however, the book sounds like an eye-opener.

Its centrepiece is the story of how Effenberg ran off with the wife of his Bayern team-mate Thomas Strunz. (The couple promoted the book with a series of semi-naked poses in German tabloid Bild.) Apparently, Strunz intercepted a text message from Effenberg that was intended for his significant other, and then rang him back to scream down the line, “You pig! You stole my wife!”

Small wonder that, when Effenberg was promoting I Showed Them All in a Munich bookshop recently, a man came up to him and howled, “Fornication! Adultery! Read the Bible!”

The unfortunate episode at the 1994 World Cup, when Effenberg was hauled off against South Korea in Dallas, gave the finger to some jeering fans and was promptly sent home by Berti Vogts, is understandably glossed over. He does, however, find the space to remind us that since then, the phrase “making an Effe” has entered the popular Teutonic lexicon.

Effenberg does not seem to be a boozehound on the scale of Bryan Robson or Gazza, but the book wouldn’t be complete without at least one episode of unfettered piss-uppery. Here, it takes the form of a late-night session with his clubmates Carsten Jancker, Giovane Elber and Roque Santa Cruz.

“I later spread out the empty bottles all over the hotel corridor so as not to give the impression an alcoholic had housed in my room,” he admits.

Is there any football in it, I hear you ask? Here and there, yes. He calls Lothar Matthäus “a quitter” for being subbed with ten minutes to go in the 1999 Champions League final against Manchester United, and slags off former internationals Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Günter Netzer elsewhere.

But you don’t want to read about that. You want the good stuff. You want the dirt about his two seasons at Fiorentina, such as the time when he “borrowed” Brian Laudrup’s car, went for a spin and then returned the keys with the words, “Hey, Brian, don’t get so pissed off. It’s not like I was shagging your wife or anything.” Or the time when he smoked dope with two Italian team-mates. Or the time when the son of Effenberg’s coach was “breaking in” the club president’s daughter-in-law.

Indeed, one of the defining features of I Showed Them All is its unnaturally yobbish turn of phrase. There are references to another player “shagging” a single mother, a drunk who “shat and pissed all over himself”, and God knows how many references to Effenberg’s penchant for vomiting his guts up at the end of a good night out.

What a man. Now, the big question: will some enterprising soul perform a public service and translate the full tome into English, as they did with Schumacher’s majestic effort?

To coincide with the appearance of I Showed Them All on Germany’s bookshelves, it has been announced that Effenberg, a man who lifted the European Cup in the San Siro less than two years ago, is now apparently contemplating a new career in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

Doha, here he comes. Or should that be Doh?