Yodel When You’re Winning: Football and the Alps

Step inside the wonderful world of Alpine football in this unique book brimming with enthralling eyewitness accounts of matches involving teams from western Europe’s most mountainous region.

Yodel When You’re Winning is the first English-language book dedicated to football in all eight Alpine countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia and Switzerland).

Covering a 20-year period, it offers an alternative and sometimes quirky perspective that takes in various aspects of Alpine culture:

• Discover why an Austrian team celebrated a 5-0 victory by wading into ice-cold glacial meltwater
• Relive the Champions League adventure of tiny Thun from the Bernese Oberland
• Read an immersive account of hiking up to 6,300ft to see a match at Europe’s highest permanent football stadium
• Hear a diverse range of views - from players to club administrators, through to an actor from a classic football film set in the region, plus a politician involved in debates about the behaviour of local ultras
• Learn about the impact of high altitude on footballers, as well as the game’s consequences for the environment

Above all, this is a book for anyone who loves to watch and learn about football in beautiful or unusual places.

Over the last 25 years Aly Mir has been a regular visitor to western Europe’s highest mountain range, combining hiking adventures with watching football. Yodel When You’re Winning: Football and the Alps is the culmination of those experiences. It is Aly’s second book, following Ten Big Ears: An Alternative Account of FC Barcelona in Europe, published by Pitch in 2022.