Four years ago, German football reached its nadir with not one Nationalmannschaft player making the top 50 list in Europe. With Germany now favourites to win Euro 2008, it’s worth remembering that the foundations for glory in Austria and Switzerland are so newly set…
Brian O’Driscoll, our man in Berlin, looks at the alarming decline of top-class German footballers, and suggests a change in mindset as well as regulation is required to rectify the situation.
The Decline And Fall Of The German Footballer
Last week, France Football announced their 50-man shortlist for the 2004 European Footballer of the Year Award. The Ballon d’Or is easily the most prestigious individual award in European football, with a tradition and gravitas far outstretching that of clone awards such as FIFA’s ridiculous World Footballer of the Year gong (if you like a player, then vote for him regardless of form).
The Ballon d’Or, on the other hand, has always been the reference with which to judge individual achievement over a calendar year. Journalists rather than coaches vote in this poll, and are at least required to give some form of balanced and objective justification for their choice, or damage credibility amongst their readership. Reputation has less of an effect here than it does with coaches. A coach will always trust in a player’s ability over form or injury, but a scribe is expected to be objective and critical. Perhaps the World Soccer World Player of the Year Award is the most democratic of contests, with readers voting rather than just coaches or journalists, but it lacks the history of the France Football award. Only the Ballon d’Or stretches back to the 1950s.
Stanley Matthews was the first ever winner, crowned in 1956. German players have been most successful, with seven triumphs shared between five players. Gerd Muller won in 1970 after his marvellous exploits in the Mexico World Cup, and Franz Beckenbauer took two awards – unprecedented for a defender – in 1972 and 1976. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge matched the feat, but became the first back-to-back German winner, with awards in 1980 and 1981, a time when he was easily the best attacking player in the world. SInce then, Lothar Matthaeus has triumphed in 1990, and Matthias Sammer won in 1996, the years of Germany’s last World and European titles.
The German dominance of the award is not limited to German winners. In the years 1976 to 1981, every European Footballer of the Year was plying his trade in the Bundesliga. Beckenbauer, Allan Simonsen (at Gladbach), Kevin Keegan (HSV) and Rummenigge were stars of the domestic game, and kept the continental crown in the Bundesliga for six consecutive seasons. Indeed, the 1981 award tells a story. Rummenigge ran away with the crown, but who was second? Team-mate Paul Breitner, one of the greatest players never to take the title. What’s more, in third place was another German, the mercurial and controversial Bernd Schuster. This kind of dominance just does not happen anymore, and it most certainly does not happen for German players.
However, the decline is highlighted when you examine the 50-player shortlist recently announced. Not one single German player is represented, and the Bundesliga flag is flown only by Ailton (Werder Bremen & Schalke 04), Angelos Charisteas (Werder Bremen), Johan Micoud (Werder Bremen), and Tomas Rosicky (Borussia Dortmund). There’s no place for Michael Ballack, which is fair enough given his ordinary season at Bayern and Germany’s Euro 2004 elimination at the group stage, but then, why is David Beckham on the list? Has he had a better year than Ballack? I think not.
Most disappointing is the omission of Philipp Lahm of Stuttgart, a side that enjoyed a good run in the Champions League last season. The young full-back was one of the best players in his position at the European finals, and his exclusion is a pity. Otherwise, few Germans can complain. Micoud had been the best midfielder in Germany last season, and Ailton was voted German Footballer of the Year for his exploits at Bremen.
So what’s gone wrong? Well, the knee-jerk reaction is to blame the surfeit of foreigners in the league. More than half of all players in the Bundesliga are non-German. The fact so few of these earned nomination suggests that German clubs are buying at the cheap end of the market, and are, unlike their Italian, Spanish, and sometimes English counterparts, filling their squads with players from whom little can be learned. Young players will always learn from a Figo, Shevchenko, or Bergkamp, but there is little to be gained from foreigners if you are a German youth at many clubs.
Having said that, German players have become complacent. Few seem willing to broaden their horizons and travel to further their careers. If foreign players are prepared to travel in search of first-team action, then the German player must do likewise. It’s a big world out there, and those players willing to go where the opportunities are instead of whinging about foreigners will have a better chance to make a successful career for themselves. Thomas Hitzlsperger at Aston Villa is a good example. He moved to England at a young age, and now finds himself in the national squad. You can bet he keeps some young English talent out of the Villa squad now, but Germans don’t seem to whine about that.
Therefore, while the days of a German 1-2-3 in the continental contest are gone, those willing to think along the same lines as their foreign counterparts stand a far better chance of revitalising German football’s reputation abroad. Regulation on the numbers of foreigners in any team would be beneficial for many reasons (not least in terms of local identity) but if you can’t beat the foreign players anymore, you have got to join them. The days of leagues being playgrounds for nationals only are long gone. It’s an international world now, and the sooner the German player adapts, the sooner he will appear again on France Football’s list of achievement.
Brian A. O’Driscoll
Originally posted at Goal.com: 22/11/2004 12:10
Retrieved from: http://web.archive.org/web/20060321091459/www.goal.com/en/articolo.aspx?contenutoid=-1073718580
