It wasn’t that long ago that a young footballer rang the doorbell at Hermann Gerland’s. The player complained that there was no more training for strikers in his club, but Gerland knew what to do. The two then practiced feints together in Gerland’s garden, which was probably just as useful as it was painful. Former defender Gerland got in the way of the young man in all his bonyness and together they simulated moves and tricks to overcome bony defenders as well as other defenders.
Of course, the name Gerland came up again when they introduced the new youth director Hannes Wolf, 42, to the German Football Association on Monday. It would be too much to say that German football would like to return to Gerland’s garden after years of over-academicization, but the effort to counter over-academicization by increasing the seniority level remains evident.
The event, which the DFB added to the program on Monday, played on two levels, one technical and one political. In terms of content, the previous U20 coach Wolf explained with commendable enthusiasm the new training path that he wants to stand for in the future – at the head of a so-called competence team, which also includes the ex-professionals Sandro Wagner, Hanno Balitsch, Lars and Sven Bender, who former striker Lena Lotzen and, of course, the owner of Hermann Gerland’s garden. It is true that Wolf’s lecture was effective in view of the main topic – abolition of over-academicization! – a bit academic, but along the way Wolf managed to come up with a few remarkable sentences that document the awareness of the problem in his new department.
It is also part of Wolf’s job to justify the competition reform in youth football
“We killed positions for our idea of football,” he said, for example – a colorful formulation that describes well what went wrong in the past decade. In short: in the effort to give all talents a tactical universal training, individualism and specialization were inadvertently abolished – which has long been expressed in an acute shortage of skilled workers for center forwards or full-backs. Wolf passionately spoke about the fact that the A youth of a big club should use all 450 of the 450 net minutes that are available weekly for training on the pitch for training and development – and no longer 150 for video training or opponent analysis waste (an approach that will go down well in Gerland’s garden).
He also tried (somewhat less passionately) to provide a few reasons for the DFB’s competition reform – for which he was not responsible – which has been criticized with some indignation by television and other experts as the abolition of the competition. In children’s small-sided soccer, the idea of performance is retained, said Wolf (although not in the form of tables); and the abolition of the principle of relegation in the junior federal leagues promises coaches who think less about the pressure to achieve results or their own careers and more about giving the talents room to mature.
Hannes Wolf will in future – and this is now the political level of the association – take on one of three directorships that will work under a management team that is yet to be found. Of these four positions, only one – that of Wolf – is currently occupied in a future-oriented manner. Rudi Völler only stepped in briefly for the post of sports director for the senior national team/U21s; his contract ends in August 2024. His successor will not be Sami Khedira after all, who failed to reach an agreement with the association; and the DFB is still looking for a suitable solution for the “women’s football” directorate as well as for the management – potential for conflict included.
Nadine Kessler is a candidate for the management – nothing more
The fact that the name Nadine Kessler recently became public caused excitement and irritation in the association. The 35-year-old ex-national player is said to be an “interesting candidate” for the management post, but a newspaper article gave the wrong impression that the matter had already been decided. In fact, the exploratory phase has apparently not even been completed, there are other candidates in the running, and concrete negotiations have not yet taken place. The responsible authorities in this turbulent association are now looking for the motive for possible moles – but the schedule remains the same, according to which the managing director should be found by the USA trip of the senior national team in October at the latest.
The selection process for the Völler job, on the other hand, will not begin until the new year, which, although not in terms of an organizational chart, is the most prominent that the DFB has to award in terms of public impact. Ideally, instead of Khedira, another former senior national player should take over the post, whose profile includes accompanying and assessing the national team and national coach at international matches and tournaments.
Hermann Gerland, it has to be said, is out of the question for this job. Unfortunately, he has not played an international match in his career.