New book by Christoph Kramer: Something with love and football

Christoph Kramer is doing well. And he knows he's fine. Because he was always wanted. This is a privilege, as he writes in his new novel “Cloud Contact Point”. Yes, the 2014 soccer world champion has written another book. And no, you definitely don't have to read it. Anyone who is interested in Christoph Kramer will at least find out what it felt like for the kicker when he signed his termination contract with Borussia Mönchengladbach. Even though he might have liked to play in the Bundesliga a little longer, he is doing well after retiring.

He has time to write books. All too often there isn't a big tournament where he has to work as an expert and his friendly face always shines a little brighter into the cameras than his pristine white sneakers - no matter how bad the game he has to judge may have been.

He also had time to sit in a bookstore after his first novel, “Life Began in Summer,” was published and wait for the first customer to buy his book. He placed it nicely in front of the stairs so that people couldn't miss it. That certainly wouldn't have been necessary. His publishing house, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, supplied the major bookstores with a lot of marketing material at the time. You also won't be able to avoid advertising the new book.

The autumn catalog lists the advertising measures for this “top title marketing”: There will be a “large-scale, multi-stage digital campaign” with “broad social media control” and a “high-reach banner campaign”. And the publisher promises a “strong author and media presence”. And then there is a very special treat for the booksellers. "Chris Kramer is coming to your bookstore! Win one of three bets in which the author personally participates in sales."

Maybe Kramer will meet someone again during one of his sales jobs who will tell him his life story, which he can then turn into a novel. According to the framework of his second film, that's what it was supposed to be like. The guy, a literature student (!), who is the first to buy his novel and also pays for it with coins, which the millionaire Kramer is particularly interested in, tells his youth story as a sometimes more, sometimes less beloved adopted son.

There is a forbidden love with the girl next door, which only at the very end turns out to have been forbidden after all. A forbidden ride on his father's Vespa, a huge Diddl mouse from the can-throwing stand at the fair, a friend who says nothing and later becomes an opera singer, another friend who builds a carpentry business from nothing and this wonderful atmosphere in Germany after the German national team's 7-1 win against hosts Brazil at the 2014 World Cup. Christoph Kramer can't do it without football.

Kramer wants to keep his fans happy. In his first novel they enjoyed the story of the farmer's boy who doesn't have an easy time with his first love and then becomes world champion. Many of them came to the readings wearing DFB or Gladbach jerseys to have their books and scarves signed by the world champion.

If you make it to the end of the new Kramer, you can enjoy the modest wisdom that the author gives his customers: “We always look at things that we don’t have (…) Unfortunately, we forget what we have.” Kramer knows he has a lot. He's fine.