Prominent footballers made the Bundesliga top scorers list last weekend, including current senior internationals (Thomas Müller, Serge Gnabry, Leroy Sané, Marco Reus) and former ones (Max Kruse, Karim Bellarabi). Kevin Schade, 20, was the only young German hopeful with his third goal of the season. As an offensive all-rounder, the U21 national player is one of the season’s high-flyers and is already regarded as SC Freiburg’s next diamond. But there are currently not many young German kickers who sparkle like Schade.
Of the total playing time of all players in the first half of the Bundesliga season, only 4.2 percent were spent by young German footballers (second division: 8.1 percent). This is a problem that the German Football League (DFL) and the German Football Association (DFB) are increasingly concerned about. “The topic is recognized by clubs and leagues,” says Andreas Nagel, DFL director for sport and youth. Meikel Schönweitz, the head coach of all DFB youth national teams, can only emphasize the good cooperation with the league at the moment: “There are no hardened fronts.” Two years ago, the DFL and DFB had already sounded the alarm and asked for an interview shortly before the outbreak of the Corona crisis. The situation has not improved significantly since then.
“We lack the breadth of players who get practice in the Bundesliga. Our pool of candidates is much smaller than that of the French or English,” warned U21 national coach Antonio Di Salvo (table football). What strikes him: “In the players born in 2000 and 2001, the playing times of foreign players in the Bundesliga are twice as long as those of German players. That’s extreme.” In other leagues in Europe, the deployment times for local talent are “three or four times as high”. Schönweitz speaks of an “extremely complex issue” whose effects will only increase: “We see that in individual years we no longer have ten or twelve, but often only a handful of top talent.”
“If you put your trust in the youngsters, they’ll pay you back”: Meikel Schönweitz, head coach of the German youth national teams.
(Photo: Oliver Killig/dpa)
Schönweitz is about more than just supplying powerful supplies for Hansi Flick’s senior national team. All in all, German football needs to move, he thinks. Remaining in old ways of thinking and competitive formats in the youth field does not help, the reform in children’s football (from 2024) can only be a first step.
The DFB has set up position-specific programs for all U-Teams, impetus is needed for everyday work in the clubs, the academies of the professional clubs and the state associations. Because the European Championship title won by the U21s in summer 2021 only concealed what had been going wrong for a long time. The outgoing league boss Christian Seifert warned at the time: “Now it’s about making up for the omissions of the past few years in youth work.”
For the junior federal leagues, too, “the philosopher’s stone has not yet been found,” they say
What is meant are actions in “Project Future”, which the DFL and DFB developed together after the failed World Cup in 2018 in order to lead the national team and young people back to the top of the world. The importance of the youth leagues should take a back seat and the individual development of young players should come to the fore. But many regional associations do not yet trust the project. DFB Vice President Ronny Zimmermann, who is responsible for youth football, admits “big points of discussion” – and that “the philosopher’s stone has not yet been found” in the competitions.
It also needs to be clarified whether the lack of top talent is also related to social changes. French football in particular draws on an exorbitant pool of up-and-coming footballers, “for whom sport is an opportunity to break out of socially difficult conditions,” emphasizes Schönweitz. That doesn’t apply to the same extent in Germany, but players like Jonathan Burkardt (Mainz) and Angelo Stiller (Hoffenheim) have prevailed in the face of resistance.
Schönweitz also lists the U21 European champions David Raum (Hoffenheim), Niklas Dorsch (Augsburg) and Lukas Nmecha (Wolfsburg), who deliberately took detours via foreign countries or the second division into account for their breakthrough. “If you trust young people, they repay it,” he says. Patience must be present on both sides, “the player and those around him should also see that it is sometimes worth taking a step back in order to move forward again”. However, Di Salvo complains that some of his U21 boys only sit on the bench even in the second division: “It’s an extremely dangerous tendency.” Di Salvo recently suffered a crushing 4-0 defeat against Poland with the U21s, qualification for the next European Championship is shaky. Without this stage, however, important experience could not be gained – a vicious circle.
Hansi Flick has developed a pragmatic counterpoint to the problem
Apparently, it only helps to a limited extent that three percent of media revenues in the Bundesliga – at least 33 million euros – are distributed for “U23 local player” assignments. Foreign jewels are predominantly promoted. In Dortmund, for example, Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland stand out, there are almost no German talents of a similar quality. The hands of the league are tied here. “We can only work on the framework conditions. Of course, the clubs have sovereignty over who they use,” says Nagel.
Some clubs rely almost exclusively on foreign players. At RB Leipzig, German players only play 7.7 percent of the time, counter examples are Union Berlin (74), Fürth (62.2) and Freiburg (61.7). According to transfermarkt.de, the proportion of foreign players in the Bundesliga is currently almost 55 percent (289 of 521 players). England’s Premier League (64.6 percent) and Italy’s Serie A (60.8) are even higher, while the Spanish Primera Division is well below the German value (41.6).
Hansi Flick has developed a pragmatic counterpoint to the problem. With Florian Wirtz, 18, Jamal Musiala, 18, and Karim Adeyemi, 19, the national coach introduced three top talents to his team early on with a view to the World Cup in Qatar. He also gave space to the U21 European champions, Nmecha and Nico Schlotterbeck, all 23, to debut in World Cup qualifiers. Flick cannot yet identify a serious youth problem, but on closer inspection he also sees that the reservoir for other national coaches is larger.