A football memento with a hidden secret received as a promotional gift serves as a reminder of family bonds and glimpses into the world of the press box
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Stories
Damian Hall tells the sorry tale of a a fragile winger who valued the art of passing over the business of winning and made a mistake leaving Arsenal
Alexander Hleb was a classic Arsène Wenger signing. He was relatively unknown in England, technically excellent, yet cursed with a pathological preference for a pass over a punt at goal. When the six-time Belarus player of the year and sometime captain of the national team arrived in 2005, he did not look like a footballer. Hleb was scrawny, too thin for his shirt – which always went untucked – with socks around his ankles. But he could play.
With the Berlin Wall coming down in October 1990, Paul Joyce recalls the first Bundesliga season where West Germany's teams met those from East Germany
The long-term significance
After reunification in October 1990, this was the first season in which teams from the former GDR joined the West German football pyramid. Only two East German sides (Oberliga champions Hansa Rostock and runners-up Dynamo Dresden) were allowed into the Bundesliga, which was expanded to 20 clubs. A further six GDR clubs entered a regionalised second division.
Now definitively part of Germany, for a while the Saar’s status was in flux. And, for a fleeting moment in history, the region was also an unlikely centre of footballing attention, explains Paul Joyce
The golden age of football in the Saar – today a region of Germany that borders Luxembourg and France – was a by-product of the tug-of-war over its political status.
The fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the end of the Oberliga. By Paul Joyce
The long-term significance
The opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, meant free movement for players and fans – and the end of the Oberliga. As reunification gathered pace, the collapse of state organisations that sponsored GDR clubs plunged football in eastern Germany into a financial crisis from which it has yet to recover.