This book traces contradictions of the world of football. It reflects on the political logic of the penalty shootout as well as on Maradona, on bourgeois aesthetics as well as on class formation, on women's soccer as well as on a mythic site of football, Kaiserslautern. In eight critical sketches, the book explores the ideological character of a hegemonic cultural practice of our age. It reflects conceptually on football and brings it down to a single formula: Einer verliert immer. – Someone always loses.