"Prior to the war, Amsterdam was seen as a city of 'Jews and cyclists'. Crammed into the Jewish quarter was a population of around eighty thousand, many of them rag merchants, banana sellers and diamond cutters. A couple of miles to the east lay Ajax's De Meer stadium - of a Sunday, a bustling hub of activity at the furthest edge of the Quarter. By 1940 the Germans had sealed off the Quarter with barbed wire; by 1945 almost eighty per cent of the ghetto's population had been wiped out. And by the end of the century the long-held notion that, by and large, half the Dutch population had some kind of link to the Resistance was coming under question. This, in a country falling under the shadow of Pim Fortuyn's party ... "

"In looking into the lives of individual players, club officials and ordinary fans during this tumultuous period Simon Kuper has skilfully pieced together an alternative account of World War II, one seen through the lens of football. He also widens the scope to take in England, France and Germany, and in depicting a continent obsessed with football during war-time - on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, ninety thousand spectators were in place for the kick-off of the German league final in Berlin - he challenges accepted notions of the war in occupied Europe."--Jacket.