When a German war-criminal-turned-soccer-star comes to play a match in post-war France, old wounds are reopened Convicted in 1944 of war crimes committed in the occupied village of Nogent-Plage, former German Sergeant Hans von Kleinschrodt is sentenced to ten years' hard labor. By 1964, he has become the captain and goalie of the German champion soccer team-but he remains infamous throughout France, despite his insistence that he alone defied orders to slaughter the villagers when the Allied Forces arrived. When the German team must face the French champions in Rouen, the very city where Hans was sentenced twenty years earlier, the stage is set for a grudge match-and revenge.
"It is a little unusual for an author of boys' books to engage himself in the argument of a moral proposition any stronger than, say, one concerned with sportsmanship . . . John R. Tunis . . . has attempted something more: an examination of conscience arising out of an incident in World War II."
Gilbert Millstein, The New York Times
"[Tunis's] most powerful book."
Terry Frei, The Denver Post
". . . a superbly narrated championship match that pits France against Germany, former friend against his enemy."
