Characteristics
Product Group
Book
"Im Tor Lars Leese" - A true story about the realisation of a boy's dream
Lars Leese has experienced what tens of thousands of leisure footballers on German ash pitches or swimming pool meadows secretly dream about: Suddenly someone comes and makes you a professional. At the age of 22, Leese played for Sportfreunde Neitersen in the Westerwald district league. At the age of 28, his parades secured a 1-0 victory over the six-time European Cup winner FC Liverpool for the English first division team Barnsley in front of 40,000 spectators. And at 32, he is back where he came from - in anonymity. One of the most curious sportsmen's careers of the present - "Mister Cinderella" called him the Frankfurter Rundschau.
For three years Leese lived in the professional football world and never lost sight of the fans. He was just as grateful for the admiration he received from the German giant in the small northern English town as he was for the training with the professionals from Bayer Leverkusen the year before. His relegation was just as unique as Leese's rise: when Barnsley did not renew his contract, he ended up unemployed. All attempts to find a professional club fail, today he has a sales office for office supplies in Cologne and plays in the evening for fun in Borussia Mönchengladbach's amateur team.
This story is told by the sports journalist Ronald Reng, but Leese himself always reports. The dream keeper is an extremely funny, anecdotal-rich book, which brings the fascination of football close even to the most sport-uninterested reader in its mix from football story and completely personal life history. So touching and knowledgeable at the same time since "Fever Pitch" no one has written about soccer.
Paperback: 255 pages
