Big Money Bad for Soccer, Says Günter Grass

He is better known as Germany's most famous writer. But yesterday Günter Grass attacked the commercialisation of football and revealed that he used to play himself - on the left wing for his local side.

Grass, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1999, said he was sickened by the role "big money" played in the game. "I find the commercialisation of football terrible. There is no fair competition any more in Germany's first and second division. This makes the competition for the championship boring," he told his local newspaper, the Lübecker Nachrichten.

He also attacked Fifa, football's ruling body, which is overseeing this summer's World Cup in Germany. "Its behaviour has been cowardly," he said. "It has ensured that football is no longer a sport for the people but is merely a big business."

Grass, the author of The Tin Drum and other magic realist texts, said he had become a football fan relatively late in life. His six-year-old son, Bruno, had started playing for his local club, prompting Grass senior to play himself as a veteran. "I played - naturally - on the left wing. Almost immediately my knees started hurting," Grass said, adding: "Some of my crosses were pretty good though."

He is an active supporter of Germany's centre-left Social Democrats and a friend of the former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, himself a former amateur player. Grass revealed that he supported St Pauli and that his favourite player was the Georgian forward Alexander Iashvili. "He looks so beautifully melancholic, even when he scores a goal," Grass said.