Soccer British footballers and sex: Cologne, city of the broad Rhine and towering cathedral, city of three women caught up with Leicester City footballers in a Spanish resort, city of Lars Leese, a German goalkeeper responsible for a book that finally approached the last great taboo of English professional football: Sex.

Leese may take some recalling, given he played only 20 games for Barnsley. But he was there during their sole Premiership season, 1997-98. He was playing when Barnsley won 1-0 at Anfield that season, and at Oakwell the 6ft 5in keeper will be remembered always through the chant "Lars Leese, tall as trees".

With the journalist Ronald Reng, Leese produced a book about his rise from non-league to Bayer Leverkusen's third team and Barnsley's first XI.

The Keeper of Dreams came out two years ago in Germany and has had the impact Fever Pitch had here 12 years ago. Like Fever Pitch, film rights have been bought and it is due in cinemas in spring 2006 - just before the next World Cup, in Germany.

Leese's account is in British bookshops and is worth reading because his story is an exceptional one within football. But on publication it was chapter seven - Barnsley By Night - which caused the stir.

Leese gave an outsider's insight into the culture of the average English football dressing-room and for his former colleagues at Oakwell it must make uncomfortable reading.

Farting and drinking are revealed as preoccupations, but a toe-curling sexual detail offered a glimpse of what can go on and what temptations are put before professional footballers. The book arrived in England this season when the term "roasting" has entered football's lexicon along with the allegations against the Leicester City players.

"This story is worldwide; well, Europe-wide," Leese said of Leicester's players, in a Cologne restaurant on Thursday night.

"And the girls come from here? When I heard about it all, my first thought was whether I could believe the girls. I know how it is when you are popular - things happen and then the next morning . . . footballers are rich and famous and if you're famous you have the opportunity. And in England, not in Germany, you have girls lining up. I've met girls in Barnsley who have said: 'We have a kind of championship, who's had the most players'.

"When the season finishes they say 'I got five', or 'four', or 'six'. They had a winner! It would never happen in Germany.

"If you are a footballer in England, girls come to you. If you are an ordinary person you have to go to girls - that's the difference. It's so easy for players, and the girls just say: 'Let's go, we'll have sex, no problem.' There was no chat - that was strange.

"One night I went out with my missus and she said: 'No more, next time you go alone.' She didn't want to see it. She was next to me and there were girls still coming and asking. It's part of the game in England."

But it is a part of the game not seen in the highlights packages. Yet, Leese left English football after two seasons convinced that sex was a significant factor in the game's subculture. Local, rather than national, fame matters.

"When you are young and playing for Leicester, or Barnsley, or Bradford, you are famous in the town, small towns. And you enjoy it and things are easy. It doesn't matter what you look like or your character, you're famous and that's it. The story I tell in the book about the groupies at the Barnsley ground is shocking - but it happened.

"And if I'd been single over there I wouldn't have cared, I'd have enjoyed it. I don't mind, I wouldn't have slept one night.

"It is English society that produces English football and people expect strange things from English footballers. In Germany, English football is so, so popular because of the bits and bobs around it. It's not just high-intensity football, in Germany we don't have characters like Keane or Gazza or Cantona."

Leese's Gascoigne experience was at a trial for Middlesbrough and included a foreign object on a tray of sandwiches. He still laughs in disbelief.

Yet, there is affection for his former world. "England is a special place with its own culture," he said. "In Germany, the image I had was of a London gentleman wearing a bowler hat, but when I got to Barnsley and saw it at night I thought, 'Jesus, this is like Majorca'. I couldn't believe it at weekends.

"At Barnsley, we actually went to Majorca on a mid-season break and the manager said, 'See you at the end of the week'. For Barnsley it was a holiday, so of course we had loads of pints. Majorca in February, though - full of old people.

"But people in Barnsley should be happy about the book, I describe them and the club as warm and friendly, and they were. It's just the players who would probably be upset. I think they'd criticise the part of the book about the Christmas party.

"Most of the players didn't tell their wives what happened. I can remember, the hookers were on stage and I rang my wife and said: 'You can't imagine what's going on here.' The players said: 'What are you doing?' I said I was calling my missus. They couldn't believe that - 'Your missus might tell my missus,' they said."

The male proactive view of sex is hardly exclusive to footballers and Leese stressed that "this is also the story with car dealers or insurance salesmen", but the groupie environment in football must alter players' perspective.

"Until we know what happened I couldn't say about the Leicester players. But maybe the players' behaviour hasn't changed, maybe it's the girls' behaviour that's changed. I know Steffen Freund, for example; he's a really nice guy, not violent.

"The charge is rape and you know that as a footballer you don't have to be violent to get sex, you know what I mean."

Leese related a tale about Georgi Hristov, who found fame at Barnsley for allegedly describing the local women as "ugly". What Hristov said in fact was that women in his native Macedonia were "beautiful" and that he missed their beauty.

However, he became a target for Barnsley females and, as Leese described: "Georgi Hristov had a fling with the so-called Miss Barnsley. She then sold her story to a big paper for £8,000 or something, all the details, all the kisses.

"So, she was famous and made money out of it. Georgi was a 20-year-old boy, quite serious, never got drunk and as Barnsley's most expensive player he knew he'd be observed. He was disappointed.

"So who knows, but that's what I thought when I heard about Leicester. I just can't imagine they needed violence to get sex. I don't want to protect the players but there are loads of girls who want headlines and they don't care how they get them. But there is no excuse for violence against women, of course. You have to protect girls."