When U.S. national team coach Jürgen Klinsmann declared ahead of the 2014 World Cup, “We cannot win this World Cup, because we are not that level yet,” it sparked howls of outrage across the country. Landon Donovan, who had recently been cut from the team by the German-native, took to television to disagree, while ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon was so incensed he told Klinsmann to “get out of America.”

Klinsmann wasn’t wrong—the U.S. lost in the round of 16—but his cold pragmatism was unwelcome in a country that not only regularly makes heroes out of underdogs but that likes to sees itself as one. Sure, there are tournament favorites, dark horse teams, and underdogs, but Americans hold dear the belief, on and off the pitch, that if you work harder, run faster than the other team, anything is possible. The World Cup seems to justify this belief; after all, tiny Costa Rica made it all the way to the quarterfinals in Brazil, and every tournament has its Cinderella team.

But the Germans have a different story to tell. Winning the World Cup, as they did in superb fashion last year, wasn’t really about hard work, or star power, or even luck. It was the spectacular payoff of a long-term investment, the result of two decades of institutional changes, tactical evolution, and structural tinkering. The Germans don’t just hope that superstars will emerge; they create them. Sure, there’s always an element of luck involved, and Germany could have been knocked out by a smaller team like Algeria, who pushed them to extra-time in the round of 16. But in Das Reboot: How German Soccer Reinvited Itself and Conquered the World, Guardian writer Raphael Honigstein doesn’t care too much about all that. Imbued with a sense of destiny, he charts his national team’s path to victory, but he’s also concerned with something bigger: the future of the sport.

Alternating between the 2014 World Cup and the past, Honigstein weaves a narrative that pulsates with the tension and energy of the tournament, threading together the many events and changes that led up to it. We relive the tournament round to round, chapter by chapter, while coming to understand how it all came to be. It’s a masterfully conceived structure, peppered with mini-profiles of key players like gangly goal machine Thomas Müller and elegant center-back Mats Hummels. Honigstein brings together decades of expertise so that Das Reboot feels fluid and comprehensive, a thorough survey of German soccer over the last fifty years that’s also light on its feet.

Germany has always been a soccer superpower, of course; even before 2014, only Italy and Brazil had won more tournaments. But there had never been a winning squad quite like this one, filled with clean-cut, well-spoken young men who, as Honigstein puts it, make “perfect sons-in-law.” For all their success, the Germans had never been known for the quality of their football. Instead, they were famous for slowly and steadily squeezing out the opposition’s attack to win 1-0, earning them the nickname “the Panzers,” after the World War II tank. The Germans’ physical style, along with a 1982 scandal in which they colluded with the Austrians to knock the Algerians out of the World Cup, endeared them to no one.