Vital Man City regular, BlueWolfie sent us the following:
My Vital Manchester City prize of the up-dated version of Bert Trautman’s biography arrived just in time for me to take it on vacation to read on the beach. And so I did.
From that you could speculate that it was either a damn fine read, or that my vacation was incredibly boring; thankfully, I can safely say it was for the former reason because my stay in Greece was wonderful.
Here we have a true legend of the game, at a time when footballers were not millionaires and anyone that threw their heart and soul into games could never be accused of doing it for any other reason than for the pure love of it. Bert Trautman definitely fell into that category.
However, this isn’t just about Trautman, the goalkeeper (and earlier on, an outfield player), but Trautman, the boy, the man, the mechanic, the soldier, the prisoner, the father, the husband.
We live his life in the pages and we see from his viewpoint and understand (to some degree) his thoughts on the Hitler Youth, Nazism, and how the world perceived Germany at a time when they were essentially the devil incarnate.
As much as (unfortunately and shamefully), black players are abused by a very small minority Trautman received it, but he recieved bigoted abuse from virtually everywhere, including City fans simply because of his background and what, in their eyes at least he represented.
To their credit though, Manchester City stood by him but did it on their terms, and we see how tight-fisted the club was and even though they were fully aware of how truly great Trautman was, they wouldn’t listen to his (often, very valid) complaints about how the club was ran.
It is worth reading and I would recommend it to anyone, but I did have a problem with Alan Rowlands writing and that was that it seemed rushed (even over 200+ pages). Too often, I found myself wanting to learn more about the man in a particular period of his life, only to discover that the writer had already moved on to the next chapter in Trautman’s life.
Yes, I understand that he led a very full (and often tragic life) and that to concentrate fully on everything may have doubled the book in size, but at least in my opinion, it should have been warranted.
Get it, buy it, read it.
To buy Trautman`s biography at a special VMC discounted price, click here.
Share this article
