It’s always the penguin. In every interview, every profile and every book review, even this one, it’s always the penguin who gets the headlines. If you speak to Lutz Pfannenstiel about it, he’ll shake his head in dismay. He doesn’t understand why we’re all so obsessed. After all, he only ‘borrowed’ it and he did put it back the next day. It’s not a big deal. Not like the monkeys. Now they were a big deal.
You probably haven’t heard of Pfannenstiel, at least not outside the wave of PR that accompanied the release of this William Hill Sports Book of the Year long-lister. Perhaps you should have heard of him though. In an alternative universe, you might have heard of him. As a youngster in the 1990s, he was offered an amateur deal with Bayern Munich. He was told he had the potential to make it in the Bundesliga. Instead, he decided to go and play in Malaysia. Pfannenstiel does things like this frequently. There are times during the book where you want to reach into the pages and shake him by the lapels, screaming, “For the love of all that is holy, Lutz! What were you thinking?!”
As a child, he lives to play. As an adult, the enthusiasm lives on and comes in particularly handy after a spell in a Singaporean prison on trumped up and now discredited charges of match-fixing.
And so begins the most peripatetic of careers, a 20 year burst of wanderlust that takes in over 400 games for 25 clubs across six different continents. There seems little logic in his choice of employers, there’s no hint of career progression. It’s just one obscure posting after another. But for all of that, it’s hard to think of him as a mercenary. Throughout the book, there’s an obvious and very pure love for the game and for the art of goalkeeping in particular. As a child, he lives to play. As an adult, the enthusiasm lives on and comes in particularly handy after a spell in a Singaporean prison on trumped up and now discredited charges of match-fixing.
In Roy McDonough’s ‘Red Card Roy’ , McDonough speaks of a moment of clarity when his career hits the skids, a point when he openly decides to take the money, whatever money he can get, and use it to fuel his increasingly boozy lifestyle. There’s none of that cynicism here.
Pfannenstiel simply ambles around the world, taking in the sights, meeting new people, making new friends, always assimilating into the local culture. When he moves to England, he doesn’t live in a hotel or alone in a luxury apartment. He takes a flat share with some students in South London. When a hanger-on visits him in Singapore and shouts innuendos at him while he trains, he’s embarrassed, acutely aware of the sensitivities of his Muslim team-mates. Often, he seems more like a gap year student, using his cocktail making skills to sustain his travels, than he does a professional footballer.
Perhaps that’s why this is such an odd, but pleasing read. We’re all so accustomed to the unshakeable idea that footballers must sacrifice everything, that fun, frivolity and friendships are disposable, that only glory matters. This is absolutely not one of those stories. This is a story of a most untypical footballer and a most untypical life. And, of course, a most untypical penguin.
