A book like a fair-weather fairy tale
No people anywhere, just empty football pitches. The photographer intentionally came on days when there were no matches. And unannounced, otherwise one or two groundskeepers might have combed the grass. But as it is, it lies there uncombed, almost as an integral part of the great plan of creation. And embedded in lots of fields, forests and meadows, because we are in Franconian Switzerland.
Under the title “Franconian Sweat”, Jürgen Rank presents a book with 130 photos of 50 football pitches on which the said substance is probably spilled in abundance during matches. A track, some poles, a few boards and signs – the useful furnishing of the idyllic landscape is complete. The author has collected iconic testimonies of areas where sport, games and excitement reign, where blood, sweat and tears as well as various local beers flow: “Heckel”, “Veldensteiner”, “Rittmayer”, “Friedmann”, all of them advertised in beautiful handwriting on the advertising boards and all of them a few leagues higher than the local football clubs. But their names alone make the book a poetry album: ASV Aufsess, TSV Mistelbach, SV Gesees, SpVgg Muggendorf, Hiltpoltsteiner SV, SC Hummeltal, DJK-FC Schlaifhausen, TSV Plankenfels, etc.
In the “Franconian Sweat” you are far from the din of the European Championships, but close to the essence of football as a popular sport. The book is by no means homely, and only moderately nostalgic, because the big wide world is by no means foreign to the author. Born in Bayreuth, he studied design in London, where he came into contact with English football culture and founded Germany’s first fan-run football museum in his home town in 2001. In 2014, his illustrated book “The Reason is Football” about stadiums all over the world was published. Jürgen Rank has visited the Franconian football venues on his way to and from work, because his main job is as chief designer at a well-known family business in Herzogenaurach, where he designs jerseys.
Fortunately, Rank does not stylize the photo motifs in “Franconian Sweat” as oases of relaxation, but at most identifies them as havens of leisurely relaxation. In the captions, he occasionally gets carried away and makes a few too many puns (although he obviously had to include the penalty with the perfectly signposted referee parking area on the TSV Gräfenberg grounds). The concise structure is impressive: goals, scoreboards, seating and standing areas, information signs, meeting places and an excursion into round and square are each dealt with in separate chapters. There is also an astonishing wealth of detail – from the aging floodlight mast in Pegnitz to the exemplary rusty pitch roller in Wiesenttal to the paid stone grandstand in Waischenfeld. On the SpVgg Jahn Forchheim poster collage for the derby against SV Buckenhofen, leading local specialist shops such as »Holzbau Blümlein« and »Reisedienst Elsner« are also allowed to advertise themselves, a cheerful potpourri of the most adventurous decorative fonts, an El Dorado of incorrect S-apostrophes. At FSV Phönix Buttenheim, on the other hand, there is almost an urban tightness due to the direct proximity of the playing field, clubhouse, church and the three-story »St. Georgen-Bräu«. But everywhere and always the following applies: The truth is on the pitch. Some people may have suffered one too many cruciate ligament tears here. Or, as the most beautiful thing in the world, found the love of their life. The bed in the cornfield was then conveniently located right behind the club grounds.
“Franconian Sweat” is a book like a fair-weather fairy tale. Wait a minute, the fairy tale must be taken back immediately, because the colorful photos, almost always covered by a blue-white sky, actually testify to true splendor. The fact that this can turn into its devastating black-and-white opposite in constant rain is also well known from other provincial parts of the world. Regardless of the weather, the Upper Franconian football world is still dominated by club crests with four-leaf clovers and signs like “no dog toilet here.” Has wishing ever helped? Here and there, people carefully moved with the times, replaced a sagging wooden bench with a row of plastic seats, patched a hole in the goal net with cable ties – but from around 1970 onwards, they largely left it alone. Everything is fine as it is, and if not, the juniors just stick a QR code on the notice board.
