Special Guest Blogger: Bert Trautmann

In the 1930's us Germans were not very popular, especially in Britain which ironically is where i ended up and was hailed a hero and even they agreed that German people could be goodies after all.
My story comes very much in four parts with the first being where i started out as a footballer for Blau und Weiss but that was interrupted when the 2nd World War started and I became a paratrooper in the German Army on the Eastern Front and won five medals including an Iron Cross First Class but when i was moved to France i was caught hiding in a barn by English soldiers and shipped to Lancashire and held as a prisoner of War until the war ended and i was offered to be repatriated back to Germany but why would i want to go back there, the place was a pile of rubble so I decided to stay and took a job as a farm worker and even picked up my football playing part-time as a goalkeeper for the local football team, St Helens.
Turned out I still had the old skills and I got spotted by Manchester City who signed me professionally for who i played for as a goalkeeper  but it was the 1956 FA Cup Final that changed everything.
We were playing Birmingham and at 3-1 up with 20 minutes to go I dived at the feet of the Birmingham striker and hurt my neck. The trainer came on, gave it a bit of a rub with a wet sponge and told me to carry on, which i did and made some vital saves to hold on and collect our winner’s medal from Prince Philip.
After the traditional dancing around and throwing the Cup around, my neck was still feeling sore so i went to the hospital and asked them to have a look and they said it was just a crick in the neck and sent me home.
Three days later it was still troubling me so i went back again and this time they X-rayed it which revealed I had dislocated five vertebrae in my neck and cracked two of them.
I carried on playing for Manchester City until 1964, making 545 appearances then went into Management with Stockport County and Burma on my CV and in 1997 was given the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany to go with my Iron Cross and received an honorary OBE for my work in Anglo-German relations but my legacy would be the only manager who could literally say to his players: 'You think your injured because your foot hurts? I won't accept anything less than a broken neck'.