Die elf Teufel (1927)

On a spartan club ground on the outskirts of town, the impoverished but dedicated football club “Linda” trains. The club’s “eleven devils”—workers, taxi drivers, waiters, and teachers—play the sport after work under the leadership of their player-coach, Tommy the welder. Linda is the club’s kind-hearted soul and Tommy’s future fiancée. One day, Mac Lawrence, coach of the wealthy football club “International,” unexpectedly turns up accompanied by the seductive vamp Vivian, an “enthusiastic admirer of sport and sportsmen,” and tries to poach Tommy as team captain. Tommy succumbs to the lure of money and Vivian’s charms, leaves his “eleven devils” and his beloved Linda, and signs a lucrative professional contract with “International.” The initial exhilaration of rising socially at the wealthy club, with its luxurious clubhouse and cocktail parties, soon gives way to disillusionment when he realizes that Vivian has courted him purely for her own ends—because he was switching clubs. Then, when he learns that he is to face his former club with “International” in a city championship, he is plunged into a serious crisis of conscience and must choose between money, luxury, and a career, or the working-class club’s camaraderie and down-to-earth spirit, and his bride-to-be Linda.