Keeper of dreams
If adolescence in the dressing room confirms for you the moral turpitude of the professional game, then read on.
But to dismiss this book as another string of mucky tabloid pearls to cast among the swine would be a shame.
At the age of 22, Lars Leese sold computer supplies and played amateur football in the German Kreisliga, at a level comparable to the Munster Senior League.
Six years later, his performance in goal for Barnsley ensured a 1-0 win in the Premiership against the mighty Liverpool in front of 41,000 fans at Anfield. Two more years and he was back in Germany. Selling sandwiches from a truck on building sites at dawn.
Leese lived our dream: an adult who had seemingly missed the boat graduates from amateur Sunday leagues to the very top of the professional game.
But Sunday dreaming never, ever, allows for such a dramatic fall from grace. Leese had talent. Talent in abundance. By 15 he was the height he would be as an adult 6ft 5in and was the star keeper for the Cologne FC U16 team.
Then at 16, like thousands before him, he discovered beer and girls and stopped playing. Simple.
Cologne came looking for him, of course, but he knew better. Two years later he was a fan cheering on some of his former team-mates, yet experiencing the first rueful pangs of regret.
At 18 he began to play again. Good enough to ensure his non-league team are promoted. Good enough to be snapped up by a semi-professional team.
Then he finally cracks it. Professional football with Bayer Leverkusen at 27. He is hired as third choice goalkeeper; cover for the cover. He is a member of the same club as Rudi Voller, at the end of his career, but will never once play in the first 11.
Christopher Daum takes over. The same Christopher Daum who was once heir apparent to the German national managerial seat before he was outed as a cocaine user.
Bayer rise from relegation fodder to serious challengers to Bayern Munich's domestic hegemony. Professional training changes Leese his physique, his abilities, all improve, but he is still nothing more than a reserve keeper.
Then Leese is offered a trial at Barnsley, newly promoted to the Premiership, and for the first time in their 110-year history, in the top flight of English football. Danny Wilson is manager the young messiah with the open honest smile.
Leese is collected at Manchester airport and deposited for the night in a Barnsley hotel. He arrives at training the next day and encounters a field of sand and soil, ploughed up by eight months of first, reserve and youth team football.
And no sign of Danny Wilson or the first team. The next day it is only the reserves again, but at least Wilson has turned up.
Leese recalls: "During training, what they refer to in Germany as a moon ball comes into the penalty area a mis-hit cross that hangs in the air for ages before dropping almost vertically from the sky.
"It's a thankless task for goalkeepers because the strikers are lurking behind you like vultures, pushing and shoving, and you have all that time on your hands to think: 'Oh Christ, what if I drop the ball'.
"When I jumped, I pushed the strikers with my shoulders, caught the ball and, as I came back down again, the strikers were on the ground on either side of me. Wilson, yelled: 'Hey, you're my man.'"
Over the three-day trial it is the only feedback he receives and he returns to Germany mystified. But his German agent makes a call; it seems his 'trial' was enough to satisfy Wilson. He is on his way to Barnsley.
One of the great strengths of Keeper of Dreams is the breadth of its vision. It moves way beyond most footballing biographies, blinkered as they are by the clash of egotism and paranoia. This is due to the technical skill of writer Reng, and Leese's unflinching honesty.
But there is another reason. Leese just happened to hitch his star to one of the great fairytales of the Premiership: Barnsley FC.
The club's wild and brief affair with the top flight had all the doomed romance of an over-reaching suitor: way, way out of his depth but driven on by pure emotion and the intoxicating proximity of failure.
The 1984 Arthur Scargill-led miner's strike, the fatal confrontation with Thatcher and the subsequent loss of 30,000 jobs decimated Barnsley and its environs. An industry, a way of life, was gone forever and the area was still designated one of the poorest in Europe by the EU in 1996.
But by 1997 things were changing. New Labour's election signalled the end of the despised Tory regime and Barnsley were promoted to the Premiership. That summer was unlike anything the provincial town had ever experienced; one long party fuelled by joyful expectation.
At the centre of this celebration were the new deities; none more exotic than the coterie of foreign 'stars' assembled to add guile to northern grit and passion.
The Zolas, Bergkamps and Schmeichels were still a relatively new phenomenon; to the monocultural Barnsley, these exotic imports were confirmation of arrival at the top. The giant Leese was the recipient of uncontrolled adulation before he ever kicked a ball.
The welcome did not extend to the dressing room. From day one, the lines were drawn. The British players, who had secured promotion, resented this foreign influx, often on higher salaries. Fear of losing their place on the team forever obliterated any appreciation of potential contribution to the club's fortunes.
Snide remarks, frosty glares, the sudden death of conversation or stifled sniggers when a 'foreign' player entered the dressing room, set the tone.
A pre-season bonding trip fails to gel the various elements. Darren Sheridan sneers at Leese's smoking habit, blissfully unaware of the irony as he starts his seventh or eighth pint. In fact, Leese is astonished not only at the prodigious intake, but even more, the Herculean English bladders.
He has been to the toilet four times; not one of the English has budged from the table. Leese eventually notices Sheridan, hand under the table, relieving himself through one leg of his shorts.
Almost from the first day of his arrival at the club Leese hears about the 'Christmas Party'. The players speak of it with the mystical fervour of Three Wise Men heading for a shed in Bethlehem.
The avuncular old groundsman, who like most non-players in Barnsley had a soft spot for the unaffected and charming German, murmurs warning asides.
Finally on the day in question he arrives in his fancy dress costume at a remote country pub to be greeted by captain John Hendrie dressed as Adolph Hitler, and Ashley Ward as Heidi, both executing 'Sieg Heils'. Leese is utterly unnerved. In Germany such actions could would lead to a prison sentence.
The English players grumble about the German lack of humour. However, the rumblings soon die as the players, youth, reserve and first team, free from any supervision, set about getting as drunk as humanly possible at three in the afternoon
Later on a couple of strippers arrive. Quicker than you can say 'Park-Lane-Hotel-Premiership-Players-Gang-Rape-Allegations' a couple of players are up on stage treating their clubmates to a live sex show.
Several weeks later the official club Christmas party is held. This time the rest of the non-playing staff are invited, as are wives and girlfriends.
It is a sedate affair; the players drink like the latter-day Tony Adams, and when wives and girlfriends suggest a spot of night-clubbing, the serious pros are far too tired and far too professional to contemplate dancing.
Starting on the bench, he is sub to first choice keeper, Dave Watson. Danny Wilson, unsure of his first choice wants to pit them against each other, creating ruthless competition for the spot. It doesn't work. Leese finds his one English friend on the squad and the pair work together to improve.
When Leese eventually gets his chance at the expense of a nasty fall in a game against Bolton that hospitalises Watson, he is so nervous he can barely lace up his boots.
Barnsley hold out for a 2-1 victory with Leese acquitting himself well. His ecstasy is boundless but the next day he visits Watson in hospital.
Meeting Watson's mother, he tells her that her son is the better keeper. Years on, Watson is still profoundly moved by the gesture. He had spent eight years playing with some of those English players and the only one to visit him was Leese.
FOR the Zidanes of this world, picking a favourite game is an evening's work. For Leese, with so few to choose from, the away game to Liverpool will always be his European and World Cup finals rolled into one. In November 1997 Liverpool were no longer the European giants of yore, but still a top name at the box office.
Leese conjures up all the old magic, the lodestones of any young boy growing up anywhere in Europe in the 70s and 80s gripped by the mighty 'Pool.
He tingles at the legendary 'This is Anfield' sign in the players tunnel, shivers as 41,000 Liverpudlians hymn 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. Then his nerves vanish, replaced by a perfect calm as he walks onto the pitch.
He hadn't played for seven weeks. An hour and a half before the game, the manager gives him the nod.
By now, the fans too were tiring of the cheerful loser tag.
Barnsley were bottom and the honeymoon was over.
In the first five minutes, Leese brings the crowd to their feet. A bad back pass is followed up rapidly by Karlheinz Reidle.
Leese tries to move the ball to the left but Reidle anticipates and gets between the keeper and the ball. Leese has surely given away the opener. But he hurls himself into a desperate last-ditch tackle from behind and somehow clears.
Fifteen minutes in and Patrick Berger unleashes a high, whistling shot from 30 yards. A fierce drive, spinning furiously, changing direction. Only when it is right in front of him does Leese know where it is going. He flies to his right, catching with both hands, oblivious to the roar behind him.
Thirty-five minutes on and Barnsley are being forced further and further back. Andy Liddell is on a rare foray forward but it appears harmless. Then David James, Calamity James, rushes from his line. Liddell shoots, more in hope.
It hits James but he can't hold it. Liddell takes another wild swing sending it towards the middle of the penalty area.
Berger is tracking back only for the ball to bounce wildly off his shin and straight to Barnsley's goal-poacher Andy Ward. Ward bundles the ball into the net. For the first time and only time that afternoon Barnsley defenders enter the Liverpool half. To congratulate Ward.
The mighty red bull had been pierced and was sorely angry. Nine Barnsley players tucked in behind the ball as Liverpool drew all from their armoury.
The Barnsley defenders were reduced to hoofing every ball clear up to Ward, but the fans cheered anyway as if each skyrocket was another goal. Leese saves from Riedle. From Leonhardson.
Only Liverpool are playing the football and pressure was becoming unbearable. But Leese throws hands, feet, anything in the way.
Gradually, he is overcome with the feeling that Liverpool will not score. He allows himself to walk behind the goal to fetch the ball, right beside the 'Pool fans. "Let one in, you f**kin' bastard" they shout.
Leese smiles at them. Then he is overcome by dread. "We can't be winning. Don't f**k it up."
Danny Murphy comes on. Fires a shot from 25 yards. Catching it, Leese sprains his wrist but clutches onto the ball.
He boots it up field and then it is over. The mighty 'Pool are vanquished, Reds fans behind Leese's goal are applauding him. He jumps into the air, his face contorted by the rigours of ecstasy. It is the photograph all the papers run with for the next few days.
Leese had become first choice keeper; Wilson confirmed it. Then a bout of food poisoning meant he withdrew from the squad. Leese felt Wilson didn't believe him. He never really regained his place.
BY the end of the season, back in the Nationwide, Wilson betrayed the fans and moved 30 miles down the road to Sheffield Wednesday.
The goose-stepping Hendrie is made player-manager. Curiously, it is not just the foreign players who resent this, but also the English ones. The freefall is rapid, morale vanishes and a near broken Leese returns to Germany.
He never played professional football again.
The Keeper of Dreams, by Ronald Reng, published by Yellow Jersey
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