Hugo Borst

Collection of humane portraits of mostly ex-footballers and coaches. Borst applies a certain style that makes famous celebrities brittle, lovable and humane.

I particularly like his obituary for Valery Lobanovski, the coach of Dynamo Kiev, the team that played near perfect football in their Europa Cup II final against Athletico Madrid in May 1986. I recall seeing that match and being completely blown over by the perfect play of Kiev players. It was an oiled machine. Hugo visits the Kiev laboratory (a backroom with burring commodore computers) to find out about the secret of their success. This secret looks suspiciously like the statistically-based integrated exertion, health and food approach virtually all top league clubs apply today. Borst also manages to insert some criticism, namely sacrificing individual creativity to team play. Ultimately the Dynamo Kiev experiment, which reflected the spirit of Soviet collectivism, was torn apart by the rise of corporate capitalism: the best players were sold to Western clubs when the Soviet Union started collapsing or ‘opening up’ to market based approaches to football – the very evil that destroyed many teams and made for a boring Champions League with a limited list of usual suspects.

It makes you long for a different time, before football was captured by money-laundering, tax-evading corporate tycoons. Many of the other stories in this collection exude a certain nostalgia for the innocent days of football, when love and loyalty for one’s club made the football world tick, instead of the present billion dollar business models that aim for eternal growth of certain ‘brands’ included in a super league.… (plus d'informations)