Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger

“It was a fittingly heroic end to this final. Because regardless of all the titles Schalke would come to collect, the most lasting legacy of this side was the creation of a concept (a myth, if you like) that permeates German football and especially the Ruhr to this day – that of honest, close-to-the-people, proletarian football. Nearly all the Schalke players had been raised in or near Gelsenkirchen, and the majority had known each other since early childhood. Most had worked either down the pits or at the steelworks, and many continued to do so while winning championships in their spare time. As if that weren’t enough to make them a close-knit group, they were also family in a very literal sense. Fritz Szepan was married to one of Ernst Kuzorra’s sisters, reserve player Fritz Thelen to another. Szepan’s own sister was the wife of Karl Ambriss. The wives of Ernst Reckmann and August Sobottka were cousins. In 1931, Ernst Kuzorra married the daughter of the man who ran the club’s pub. Winger Bernhard and goalkeeper Hans Klodt were brothers (though they only played together for a few years).”
― Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger, Tor!: The Story Of German Football

“Young Schuster could have been the answer to many of West Germany’s problems. So good was he that Barcelona came in with an offer only three months after the European Championship. Schuster had fallen out with his club coach and so the country’s best prospect went abroad at a tender age indeed. Schuster stayed in Spain for 13 years, proving he feared nothing and nobody when he moved from Barça to Real Madrid – and then from Real to Atlético Madrid. Later, the Spanish press voted him the best foreigner ever to grace their league, ahead of Alfredo Di Stefano and Johan Cruyff.”
― Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger, Tor!: The Story Of German Football