Karl-Heinz Granitza’s engaging biography shines a German spotlight on the Chicago sports hero’s legacy in American soccer

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The number of readable books about American soccer history are few and far between. All the more shame that this engaging biography of the Chicago Sting’s prolific and charismatic striker, Karl-Heinz Granitza, has so far only been published in German, Granitza’s native country. It deserves a place on any bookshelf in the sparse but important section marked “North American Soccer League.”

With 128 goals, Granitza was the NASL’s third all-time leading scorer behind Giorgio Chinaglia (193) and just below Alan Willey (129). He was second in the table of assists with 101, beaten only by the Cosmos’ legendary Vladislav Bogićević (147). Famous for his deadly left foot and his accuracy from direct free kicks, Granitza was a forward out of time. He didn’t like high balls to his head, as ordered by his first coach at the Sting, the Englishman Malcolm Musgrove. The German preferred to drop back and have the ball played to his feet. Despite his hunger for goals, he always recognized when a teammate was better placed to score.

His arrival in Chicago in 1978 was ordained less by fate, and more by money. When courted by the Sting’s German-speaking GM Willy Roy, Granitza was not really interested in moving on loan for the summer from Hertha Berlin, which had just played a decent season in the Bundesliga and qualified for the UEFA Cup. The striker was ready for a break. Then Hertha’s owner Ottomar Domrich explained to him that without the 100,000 Deutschmark loan fee, the club was facing bankruptcy. In addition, the player would almost double his wages and get a house and a car into the bargain.

Willy Roy was in a hurry, while Granitza was inclined to think about the move. His wife Roswitha was on vacation in Bulgaria and he had no way of contacting her. “Leave her a nice letter,” Roy advised him. Once Granitza had lied to the U.S. consulate that he needed to travel urgently to the USA because his sister had been in a car accident there, his visa was ready and he hopped on to the next plane. He left Roswitha a note on the kitchen table: “I’m in Chicago.” She was less than amused, but the marriage has survived the subsequent 50 years.

Granitza quickly realized that Musgrove was as hopeless as his new club. It also nagged at him when Polish teammate Robert Gadocha advised him to take it easy in training. Like most German pros, Granitza hated losing, no matter what league they were in or who they were playing for. “I made a lot of Americans into better players,” he says now. “The winning attitude, this will and readiness to go the extra step, that’s what I instilled in them.” Sting’s owner Lee Stern, who hadn’t become a multi-millionaire by handing out candy for free, recognized a kindred if somewhat maverick spirit, and assented to building the team around him.

Willy Roy replaced Musgrove as coach, and the arrival of compatriots Arno Steffenhagen and Horst Blankenburg began to turn the team’s fortunes and style of play around. Granitza thought his U.S. foray was over after the initial three-month loan, but his move became permanent when he failed to find his form back in Berlin, and Hertha needed still more cash from a transfer fee. Now he resolved to win his first major honors as a player, and the book takes us through the ups and downs on the Sting’s way to their first NASL title in 1981, and its second at the league’s death-knell three years later.

After the Sting won the second (and the league’s swansong) game in the three-game 1984 final series against the Toronto Blizzard, Toronto’s GM Clive Toye refused to congratulate the victors. “I’d hate to wake up in the morning and find out I was a cheat like Roy and Granitza,” said Toye. “Granitza’s nickname should be ‘carpet’. He spent more time acting on the ground than he did playing soccer.” Granitza says that Toye came across like a colonial master: “His attitude was — I come from the kingdom of England, you’re just here to learn from my example. He was a blatherskite. He had no idea about soccer.”

Yet as well as his excellent goalscoring feats, Granitza freely admits that he was taught how to go down in the box at one of his first clubs, DJK Gütersloh. Paul Gardner wrote in a 1981 Daily News profile of Granitza: “Constantly annoys opponents by faking injuries after tackles and drawing free kicks — which he will then take himself and transform into things of beauty.” The old yin and the yang of flawed soccer genius.

Like his kindred spirit Chinaglia, Granitza was “obsessed with goals and addicted to winning,” writes Hermanns. Both were egocentric and tyrannical and ready to chew out their teammates when things weren’t going well. It was this habit that finally compelled Lee Stern to fire Granitza a few years after the NASL’s demise, when the Sting was playing on in the Major Indoor Soccer League. Granitza publicly screamed at young college graduate Paul Krumpe for having shot on goal instead of passing to him. The doubtless crucial game to Cleveland was lost 6-5. When Granitza refused Stern’s demand to come back out of the locker room and apologize before the fans, his decade with the team was over. After a failed restaurant venture and a spell with the semipro Chicago Power, the family returned to Germany in 1991.

⬆️ U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame-Induction spread in the Feb. 22, 2003, edition of Soccer America.

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Nonetheless, Granitza was inducted into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2003, and remains a hugely popular figure in Chicago’s sporting history. Even after the NASL went bust, the Chicago Tribune wrote that the player was “one of the most well-known sportsmen in the city, despite playing the sport that interests sports’ fans the least. If every NASL franchise had had a Granitza eight years ago, then maybe soccer would still be broadcast nationwide.” He tirelessly taught and promoted the game on his free afternoons, and would even exasperate his family on outings by stopping the car whenever he saw kids playing the game, then stepping out for five minutes to teach them the basics of passing, shooting and ball control.

“He made it his personal crusade that the game should grow and thrive to new heights,” wrote another newspaper. “Not just in Chicago, but in every last nook and cranny of this country.” As with so many NASL legionnaires, this legacy still hugely benefits North American soccer in a way that few thought would be relevant when the league locked its doors way back in 1984.

• “King Bomber Karl” By Stefan Hermanns is available on Kindle (German language only)

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Ian Plenderleith’s “Rock n Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League” is still available HERE. His latest book, The Last Amateur, can be bought HERE or direct from the UK publisher, Halcyon.

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