Interview With Raphael Honigstein

The new Bun­desliga sea­son is just days away, so Bun­desliga Talk writ­ers Mark Moll and Dou­ble Pivot decided to inter­view one of the pre­em­i­nent writ­ers and authors on the topic of Ger­man soc­cer, Raphael Honigstein.

Many read­ers may know Honig­stein best from his appear­ances on the Foot­ball Weekly Pod­cast by The Guardian. Here’s the tran­script of the inter­view. Enjoy.

The Gaffer: What goals do you have with Footbo.com?

Raphael Honig­stein (RH): We’d like to be the nat­ural des­ti­na­tion site for peo­ple who love foot­ball and want to discuss/enjoy/experience it with oth­ers online. You’ll see big new fea­tures in the next month or so that will rad­i­cally expand our scope. Social net­work­ing is only the start for us.

Mark Moll (MM): Grow­ing up in Munich, did you ever appear for a local youth side?

RH: My foot­ball edu­ca­tion was some­what unusual because I never liked the idea of organ­ised sport as a kid. My par­ents didn’t push me towards that direc­tion either, so instead of join­ing a club, we lit­er­ally played foot­ball seven days a week with friends in parks and on school pitches — until the jan­i­tor kicked us out. We also formed a team that took part in Munich’s biggest ama­teur tour­na­ment every year. I only played my first game for a proper club when I was 18, in Munich’s low­est league (C-Klasse). A year later, I moved to Lon­don where I played for UCL (Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don) but I think it’s fair to say I found their inter­pre­ta­tion of the foot­ball rules a lit­tle dis­turb­ing. In 90 min­utes, there’d be per­haps one free-kick. I’m not exag­ger­at­ing. After a few more years in a Lon­don Sun­day league and three ACL surg­eries later, I called it a day in 2002.

MM: You’ve been liv­ing in Lon­don now for 15 years, how did you get your start cov­er­ing football?

RH: I started writ­ing music fea­tures for Süd­deutsche Zeitung’s youth sup­ple­ment while at col­lege. When my pre­de­ces­sor, the leg­endary Ronald Reng, decided to move to Barcelona in 2002, I inher­ited his job.

MM: Hav­ing writ­ten for Eng­lish, Ger­man, and Amer­i­can audi­ences do find that you write in a dis­tinct style for each?

RH: It’s not so much a case of dif­fer­ent audi­ences in dif­fer­ent coun­tries — more impor­tant is the type of pub­li­ca­tion. In a broad­sheet, you have to explain things a bit more because you can’t be sure about the detailed knowl­edge of the reader. The oppo­site is true for foot­ball or sports mag­a­zines, where you can con­cen­trate more on the details. And writ­ing for the Guardian online is obvi­ously a writer’s dream assign­ment — there are no rules, apart from fil­ing on time. That’s the most dif­fi­cult part of it.

MM: If the Pre­mier­ship is noted for its tough, uptempo play and La Liga for its tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­ity on dis­play, how would you char­ac­ter­ize the Bundesliga?

RH: I think the Bun­desliga has tra­di­tion­ally tried to blend the con­trolled aggres­sion and phys­i­cal side of the Eng­lish game with good tech­nique. We’ve also had good input tac­ti­cal input from East­ern Euro­pean coaches in the 60s and 70s.
It’s an inter­est­ing time now. After years of neglect, most teams are wak­ing up to a more sci­en­tific approach when it comes to fit­ness and tac­tics. The sta­di­ums are always full and cheap prices have insured that the core audi­ence of young males hasn’t been alien­ated. I think the league is well poised to chal­lenge La Liga and Serie A for sec­ond spot in the long term.

Dou­ble Pivot (DP): Last year, after a seem­ingly very suc­cess­ful Lig­apokal, there was talk of expand­ing the pre-season tour­na­ment to as many as 32 teams. Yet this year, we find it can­celed. What is the sit­u­a­tion with that tour­na­ment, and how do you see it evolv­ing in the com­ing years?

RH: Due to the Euros and the late return of the Ger­man inter­na­tion­als, they sim­ply couldn’t find suit­able dates this sea­son. Its future is under review right now. There has been talk about stag­ing it abroad, but I don’t see that hap­pen­ing in the com­ing years.

DP: Felix Mag­ath has really turned around Wolfs­burg and seems poised for a very suc­cess­ful cam­paign. If he does have suc­cess, could you see the Bun­desliga mov­ing from train­ers to Eng­lish style managers?

RH: It’s pos­si­ble, but most clubs are nat­u­rally reluc­tant to give too much power to a sin­gle indi­vid­ual. I think it’s more likely that the con­ti­nen­tal model — coach + sport­ing direc­tor — will make head­way in Eng­land rather than the other way round. A few PL clubs are already run that way because they’ve found that the task is too big for one indi­vid­ual. Even Fer­gu­son or Wenger del­e­gate a lot of work.

The con­ti­nen­tal model is also bet­ter at avoid­ing George Graham-type sit­u­a­tions of “con­flict of inter­est” when it comes to sign­ing players.

DP: I would love to get your opin­ion on the capa­bil­i­ties and weak­nesses of Germany’s bumper crop of young keep­ers: Rene Adler, Manuel Neuer and Michael Rens­ing. And when do you think Low will give these kids the chance they deserve?

RH: Adler is the best by far. He doesn’t have any obvi­ous weak­nesses. He’ll be a very seri­ous con­tender for the World Cup, along with Hilde­brand and Enke. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if Bay­ern had already secretly talked to him. I don’t think they’re really sold on Rens­ing, who is good but not out­stand­ing in my view. He doesn’t dom­i­nate the box enough, lacks pres­ence and is sus­pect when it comes to long-range shots. He’ll be given six months to prove him­self. Neuer, on his day, is an incred­i­ble shot-stopper, with good instincts. But he seems to suf­fer from nerves and still makes too many mistakes.

DP: The well has dried up as far as Europe is con­cerned with Bun­desliga sides. What do you think needs to hap­pen for Ger­many to start catch­ing up with the big three leagues in UEFA/UCL?

RH: In the Cham­pi­ons League, it will be a while before Ger­man clubs can com­pete on equal terms. The finan­cial power of the big four in Eng­land, the top two in Spain and the top three in Italy is just too big. Bay­ern can and should make some sort of an impact, but for a more sus­tained attack, we sim­ply need more TV money or oli­garchs. In a way, the Bun­desliga has also been a vic­tim of its com­pet­i­tive­ness: the top five, with the excep­tion of Bay­ern, are very fluid, and with­out reg­u­lar CL money, clubs like Ham­burg or Stuttgart find it hard to sus­tain the chal­lenge in Europe.

As for the UEFA Cup, I think there’s actu­ally a good chance a Ger­man team will win it this sea­son. Results notwith­stand­ing, Bay­ern and Werder were the best teams in the com­pe­ti­tion last year, and decent results over-all have seen us over-take France in the UEFA rank­ings. Sig­nif­i­cantly, the Bun­desliga clubs also got bet­ter results col­lec­tively than Ital­ian teams last sea­son. That hasn’t hap­pened before in the last ten years. Sim­i­lar results this sea­son would put us on course to wres­tle third spot from Italy in the UEFA rank­ings in two years time.

Visit Raphael Honigstein’s page at Footbo.com.

Tagged as: Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Bremen, Champions League, FC Bayern München, Felix Magath, Football Weekly, George Graham, Germany, Hamburger SV, Manuel Neuer, Michael Rensing, Raphael Honigstein, Rene Adler, Robert Enke, The Guardian, UEFA Cup, VfB Stuttgart