Christoph Biermann is an award-winning football writer and one of the most respected voices in the field. His books have twice won Football Book of the Year in his native Germany, where he is a reporter for the magazine 11 Freunde.
Christoph Biermann grew up with his three years younger brother in Herne in the Ruhr area. Together with his father he started visiting football matches in 1971 first at local club Westfalia Herne and from 1974 on at VfL Bochum his favourite club to this day. After graduating from high school in 1979, he completed a degree in German studies and history at the Ruhr University Bochum. During his studies he was music editor of the Bochum magazine Marabo and was running the independent music label Nielsen2 Schallplatten. He became a freelancer for the sports section of the Die Tageszeitung in the mid-1980s and after graduating in 1987, he worked as a freelancer for various print and broadcast media (including Stern, Die Zeit, Playboy). In 1990 he sang a single with the songs German masters will never be the VfL (A-side) and German champion will only VfL (B-side).
In 1992 he moved to Cologne and from 1996 to 1999 he sat in the editorial office of the Freiburg based Hattrick football magazine. From 1999 to 2006 he was a sports correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He then moved to the news magazine Der Spiegel / Spiegel Online until 2010. Having been a columnist for the monthly magazine 11 Freunde from 2004 he became a member of the editorial board in 2010. Since 2018 he has been a reporter at the magazine.
From the early 1990s on, he has published 14 books on football. Die Fußball-Matrix (2009) and Wenn wir vom Fußball träumen (2014) were voted Football Books of the year. He is a member of the German Academy of Football Culture and a member of the board of trustees of the the cultural foundation of the German FA. Christoph Biermann lives in Berlin.
Twitter: @chbiermann