Luca Toni is an absolute shoe-in to win this season’s German Footballer of the Year award. In 2005, Michael Ballack won prompting me to question his position in the roll of honour…
Michael Ballack is the German Footballer of the Year for the third time. In his regular Bundesliga column from Berlin, Brian O’Driscoll thinks he would have struggled to win even once in any other decade.
All That Glitters…
There we have it. Michael Ballack is named German Footballer of the Year for the third time by some of the country’s most informed journalists. Well done, Michael, but your third victory is living proof that we are living in a barren age for German football.
Before I go on, let me make myself clear. I rate Michael Ballack. In fact, I think he is one of the best midfielders in Europe at the moment and has been for a good four years now. He is a worthy German Footballer of the Year, and a player on whose shoulders a genuine World Cup bid can be made next summer. He is not, however, as good as his three accolades suggest.
Last week’s win sees him join legendary figures Uwe Seeler and Sepp Maier on three titles, just one behind the outright leader Franz Beckenbauer. Lothar Matthäus, Germany’s last World Cup-winning captain, won just twice. Ditto Gerd Müller, the greatest modern goalscorer the world game has known. So how can Ballack win three times and not stand true comparison?
To answer, you simply need to take a look back at the list of previous winners and marvel at the quality and diversity of the talent rewarded in the prestigious accolade’s history. The first winner, Seeler, played in four World Cups and was one of the best forwards on the planet for the duration of his career. Over that time, he scored 43 times for his country and made countless more goals for the likes of Gerd Müller who emerged in time for Seeler’s final World Cup in 1970 and took two domestic awards in the process.
Max Morlock and Karl-Heinz Schnellinger were other winners in the 1960s, and goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski became the first of an elite group of custodians to take the award in 1965. All were truly fine players, but none had a chance to win more than once in an era of giants like Seeler and Beckenbauer, who won the first two of his four titles in that decade.
The 1970s was a golden age for German football, and the award’s roll of honour reflected that. Seller won for a final time, and Günter Netzer (pictured) and Berti Vogts both won twice, mirroring the success of Borussia Mönchengladbach in becoming the rivals-in-chief of triple European champions Bayern. Both players were also part of the 1972 European Championship-winning team and the subsequent World Cup squad that triumphed on home soil in 1974. Being German Footballer of the Year in the 1970s meant winning at home and abroad for club and country. To underline this point, the successes of Beckenbauer and Maier accounted for the remainder of the decade’s individual honours.
Such was the strength of the German game then that a player most famous for his 1970s displays had to wait until 1981 for his sole crown. Paul Breitner had moved from full-back into midfield for club and country by now, and was rewarded for his role in the two-pronged Breitnigge attack one year after the world’s top striker, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, had taken his only domestic award. Rummenigge’s is a case in point. Restricted to a single success at home, he nevertheless took home two European Footballer of the Year awards in the early 1980s, emphasising the strength of the domestic talent pool. Being the best in Europe didn’t always guarantee national hegemony.
Other luminaries from the 1980 European Championship-winning team claimed crowns soon after, with Karl-Heinz Förster, Hans-Peter Briegel, Rudi Völler, and Harald Schumacher rewarded for their effervescent domestic displays. As before, winning in the 1980s meant performing consistently well for club and country. All played in the final matches of two World Cups.
Jürgen Klinsmann, Thomas Häßler, and Lothar Matthäus, 1990 World Cup winners, took six titles between them in the late 1980s and 1990s, and Euro 96-winners Andreas Köpke and Matthias Sammer, another European Footballer of the Year, earned three titles between them in the mid 1990s. The man who scored the winning goal at Wembley against the Czechs, Oliver Bierhoff, was rewarded in 1998. Jürgen Kohler won a Champions’ League with Dortmund and the player award in 1997. In the nineties, success abroad meant acknowledgement at home.
And so to the noughties, Oliver Kahn won his Champions League in 2001 and became the only goalkeeper ever to win the Golden Ball at a World Cup the following year. His wins in 2000 and 2001 were richly deserved. Since then, the standard has dropped. Ballack had an excellent 2002, helping the national team to the World Cup final and Bayer Leverkusen to runners-up spots in the Bundesliga, DFB Pokal, and Champions’ League. Is it unfair to point out that he won nothing? Maybe, but that would not have been the case in the past.
Ailton was outstanding for Werder Bremen in their title triumph of 2004, but he’s not fit to lace the boots of any previous winner. His international performances mark him down. That Ballack has won for a third time illustrates that he is the only world-class outfield German footballer of the moment and confirms that he has few rivals for an award that looks to be going through a low ebb. In any other decade, it is my contention that he would not have won even once. This simply sums up the dearth of true greatness in the game at the current time. If the past was often a golden age – and it was never as shiny as some would have you believe – we are currently passing through the alu-foil age. All that glitters is not gold, and the only gold that really matters is up for grabs next summer on German soil. Can Ballack prove me wrong?
Originally posted at Goal.com: 31/07/2005 20:16
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