On the 14th July 1920 the greatest of German football institutions first saw the light of day. It wasn't a team, a cup or a league....it is a magazine. And without it German football would not be the same.
100 years ago today Walter Grensemann first published Kicker, the indispensable guide, nay bible, to anyone wishing to find out any detail whatsoever, no matter how irrelevant it may seem, about German football. You want to know the scores in the games taking place in this afternoon‘s 9th tier games in the Kreisliga Ostthuringen B..? Kicker is the place to look...and it won‘t let you down!
Now much easier to access due to the ubiqitous app, you are never more than moment away from getting an update on any particular game you could imagine (though it does only cover the top divisions of foreign leagues). Once upon a time, its print version, which has appeared every Monday and Thursday for decades, was the only way to get hold of all the match reports from the previous weekend’s games (German newspapers are much more provincial and would only publish reports on local teams’ matches).
And there are those of us even now whose summer is incomplete until a copy of the pre-season Kicker Sonderheft is procured, giving you every detail about the summer moves and the prognosis for the forthcoming season (less exciting now that Bayern Munich win the Bundesliga every year, but even so ... ). Hence the importance of those summer holidays to Germany ...
So here’s to Kicker...long may it continue to supply us not only with the important stuff, but also with the minutiae every football fan can appreciate!