Digging Deep

The Greatest Game You’ve Never Heard Of Who was the best Brazilian footballer of all time? Easy – Pelé. Argentina? Maradona or Messi. Portugal? Ronaldo. England? Bobby Charlton. But who was the greatest Jewish footballer ever? That’s a question to send even the most historically literate football nerds into an uncharacteristic silence. And yet, before the Holocaust, Jewish talent was at the very heart of European football. Jews were among the superstar players who drew tens of thousands to stadiums – as well as the visionary coaches revolutionising tactics, the administrators professionalising the modern game, and even the elite referees, not to mention the hordes of passionate fans. Digging Deep excavates a destroyed civilisation to reveal the untold stories of men who were icons one minute and marked for extermination the next. Setting exhilarating sporting triumphs against the harrowing backdrop of twentieth-century history, it restores eleven forgotten greats to their rightful place in the football pantheon. More than a sports book, this is a journey through the prism of the magnificent game to find the human stories within the savage reality of the Holocaust.