German Youth Success Reflects Positively On Bundesliga

With this weeks 4–0 drub­bing of Eng­land u21s by the Ger­man u21s, Die Mannschaft com­pleted a hat-trick of youth level Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships (win­ning the u17, u19, and u21 tour­na­ments). Such suc­cess indi­cates that the future of the Bun­desliga is bright, and that while the Serie A begins a period of decline, the Pre­mier League is used as a scape­goat for the fail­ures of the Eng­lish national team, and La Liga devolves into a 2 horse race, the Bun­desliga is poised to regain its place amongst the top 3 leagues in Europe.

It is dif­fi­cult to over­look the fact that in this past Euro Under 21 Cham­pi­onship, held in Swe­den,   the Ger­man youth out­played Spain’s young stars, out-‘Italianed’ the Ital­ian team, and oblit­er­ated a promis­ing Eng­land team. To be sure, the Ger­man team did not always appear dom­i­nant, as they had to work through dif­fi­cult peri­ods in the games against Fin­land, Eng­land (dur­ing the group stage), and Italy, how­ever these dif­fi­cult peri­ods pro­vided an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity for this next gen­er­a­tion of Ger­man national team play­ers to gain expe­ri­ence doing what many pun­dits claim the Ger­man team does best: find­ing a way to win.  In nearly every area of the park the Ger­man team showed a level of matu­rity greater than that of their oppo­nents – a matu­rity that only comes from play­ing in first-team matches in a top flight league. A quick look man­ager Horst Hrubesch’s squad from the Match day 1 squad against Spain shows that every mem­ber of the start­ing XI had racked up ample first team action dur­ing the last Bun­desliga cam­paign. Such thor­ough top-flight first team expe­ri­ence was hard to come by in teams like Italy, Spain, and Eng­land– all stem­ming from the fact that the Bun­desliga is a league in which promis­ing youth play­ers are given excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties to prove themselves.

Of course, this recent dom­i­na­tion of youth com­pe­ti­tions by Ger­many would have been impos­si­ble with­out the com­plete revamp of the Ger­man youth struc­ture after the deba­cles of the 1998 World Cup and 2000 Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships. The com­bi­na­tion of train­ing cen­ters run by the 36 1.Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga clubs and the DFB orga­nized Stützpunkte, regional train­ing cen­ters, have helped cul­ti­vate and develop a siz­able amount of young tal­ent within Ger­many.  While many of the names now break­ing through at youth lev­els for Ger­many may not have typ­i­cal Ger­man sur­names, one can­not doubt their loy­alty and desire to wear the famous White-on-black kits, nor their abil­ity to play the Ger­man way.

With the core of the cur­rent Ger­man squad aging, Senior National boss Joachim Loew will undoubt­edly be look­ing to add fresh faces to the senior set up fol­low­ing next summer’s world cup in South Africa. The cham­pi­onship win­ning squad of this past week is where you’ll find the future of the Ger­man squad mov­ing towards Euro 2012 and beyond.

While Rene Adler, Germany’s cur­rent num­ber 1 between the posts has both youth and abil­ity, Schalke’s Manuel Neuer is cer­tain to con­test for the start­ing spot. A goal­keeper with Cham­pi­ons League expe­ri­ence, Neuer showed a level of matu­rity and com­po­sure that his coun­ter­parts lacked. Nowhere was this dis­par­ity in expe­ri­ence and matu­rity more appar­ent than in the final against Eng­land. While Eng­land goal­keeper Scott Loach made sev­eral crit­i­cal errors, and looked uncom­fort­able all night, Neuer was the model of com­po­sure between the posts. Admit­tedly, Loach was the backup goal­keeper for the Eng­land squad, but the mere fact that start­ing keeper Joe Hart missed the final due to a silly, avoid­able book­ing only adds to the argu­ment of immaturity.

In defense, Ger­many looked stel­lar all tour­na­ment. The Ger­man defense pulled shutouts in 4 of their 5 games in Swe­den, allow­ing only 1 goal off a set piece in the group match against Eng­land. The ful­crum of this impreg­nable defense was young Schalke cen­ter­back Benedikt Howedes. Howedes got quite a bit of play­ing time dur­ing this past cam­paign due to ram­pant injury prob­lems at the Veltins Arena. One of the few sym­bols of youth in speed in an aging Schalke defense, Howedes is now a prime can­di­date to replace the aging and incon­sis­tent Christoph Met­zelder as a part­ner for Per Merte­sacker in the cen­tral defense of the senior squad.  Along with his part­ner Jerome Boateng of Ham­burg, (though him­self used to play­ing more on the out­side at the Nordbank-Arena) proved a team capa­ble innen­vertei­di­ger.

On the flanks of the defense Hoffenheim’s Andreas Beck and Werder Bremen’s Sebas­t­ian Boenisch (note to the Eng­lish com­men­ta­tors from Sky sports, his name is pro­nounced ‘Bo-nish’ not ‘Boz-nitch’) dealt with the threats from the likes of Theo Wal­cott, James Mil­ner, and Sebas­t­ian Giovinco, as well as tor­mented oppo­si­tion defenses with their effec­tive for­ward runs. Nowhere was this trend more on dis­play than with Beck’s won­der goal against Italy in the Semi-final . This pair gained their expe­ri­ence and effec­tive­ness from suc­cess­ful domes­tic cam­paigns at their respec­tive clubs. Hoffenheim’s rise to com­pet­i­tive­ness at the top of the table undoubt­edly gave Beck the con­fi­dence to deal with the likes of Theo Wal­cott. Mean­while, Sebas­t­ian Boenisch cer­tainly found both the con­fi­dence and matu­rity to hold his own in the final from the fact that it was his third cup final in a lit­tle over a month, hav­ing pre­vi­ously appeared in both the finals of the UEFA Cup and DFB Pokal for club side Werder Bremen.

Although the con­fi­dent and capa­ble nature of the goal­keeper and defense cer­tainly proved the foun­da­tion for Ger­man suc­cess, the cut­ting edge was found in the Mid­field. For all intents and pur­poses, Horst Hrubesch was effec­tively play­ing with 5 mid­field­ers. Anchor­ing the mid­field was Stuttgart player, and Ger­many under 21 cap­tain Sami Khedira. Khedira did an excel­lent job of absorb­ing the attacks of the oppo­si­tion as well as ini­ti­at­ing attacks from the crit­i­cal role link­ing defense and mid­field. On the right flank, Gon­zalo Cas­tro of Bayer Lev­erkusen showed the tim­ing and pace to cut through oppo­si­tion defenses with this slash­ing runs, net­ting goals in both games against Eng­land. The star of the Ger­man mid­field in this tour­na­ment, how­ever was Mesut Ozil.

Schalke fans should cer­tainly be proud of the per­for­mances put in by Manuel Neuer and Benedikt Howedes, they should be absolutely infu­ri­ated with their club for let­ting a tal­ent the likes of Mesut Ozil go to rival Werder Bre­men. The young attack­ing mid­fielder came into his own this past sea­son, albeit in the shadow of tal­is­manic num­ber 10 Diego.  Many were right­fully crit­i­cal of Ozil when he seemed to fold under the pres­sure of play­ing with­out Diego dur­ing the UEFA Cup final against Shak­tar Don­estk, how­ever the young num­ber 11 from Werder Bre­men has done much to put such crit­i­cisms to rest since then, scor­ing the win­ning goal in the cup final against Lev­erkusen (iron­i­cally, off an excel­lent pass from Diego), as well as being the cre­ative spark in the Ger­man mid­field dur­ing this past tour­na­ment.  By his own admis­sion, Ozil prefers to set up his team­mates rather than score him­self, but the some­what for­tu­itous goal against Eng­land in the final shows that Ozil is devel­op­ing in this regard, as he seems to be learn­ing the age old truth that “you gotta shoot to score.” Ozil will have a chance to prove him­self capa­ble of per­form­ing con­sis­tently at the high­est level this next sea­son for Werder Bre­men with the depar­ture of Diego to Juven­tus. Fans of Die Mannschaft will undoubt­edly be eager to see if he con­tin­ues to progress.

The posi­tion of striker is per­haps one place where this Ger­man team needs to improve. Ashkan Deja­gah of Wolfs­burg, was played out of posi­tion as a striker by man­ager Horst Hrubesch. While MSV Duis­burg front man San­dro Wag­ner scored two excel­lent goals against Eng­land in the final, it remains to be seen whether or not he is senior team mate­r­ial. With the likes of Miroslav Klose aging, Lukas Poldolski’s career stag­nat­ing, and Mario Gomez still unable to find top form with the national team, the Ger­man team is still look­ing for a cadre of strik­ers for the next gen­er­a­tion. There is cer­tainly hope to be had in Patrick Helmes, who is him­self still young. If Helmes can find his feet at the national team level, and Lukas Podol­ski and Mario Gomez can begin fir­ing on all cylin­ders, the Ger­man national team will be well set for strik­ers for sev­eral years to come, and the cur­rent drought of youth team strik­ers can be surmounted.

It remains to be seen if any of the stars of the Ger­man Under 21 vic­tory in Swe­den 2009 will break into Loew’s team for South Africa 2010, it is cer­tain that Ger­many will not want for qual­ity play­ers head­ing into Euro 2012 and World Cup 2014. With the likes of Met­zelder, Friedrich, Frings, Bal­lack, and Klose all enter­ing the final acts of their national team careers, it is a safe bet to say that the tal­ents of Howedes, Beck, Khedira, Ozil, Marin, and Kroos will be there to fill their places. The future is bright for the Ger­man National team. A future made all the brighter by the fact that the Bun­desliga pro­vides an envi­ron­ment and oppor­tu­nity for young, tal­ented play­ers to ply their trade in a top flight league that is highly com­pet­i­tive in regards to title-challengers.  As other leagues in Europe face iden­tity crises or a lack of com­pet­i­tive youth, the Bun­desliga con­tin­ues to bring in larger prof­its by the year both on and off the field.

Tagged as: bundesliga, Euro Under 21 championship, Germany, Khedira, Neuer, Ozil, Youth