For a long time Germany were considered the blueprint for how to create a thriving, dominant national team.
The country’s huge success was born out of failure at the turn of century when they finished bottom of their group at Euro 2000, held in Belgium and Holland. The nation “stared disaster in the face” a report into youth development commissioned by the Bundesliga later said.
But massive investment in creating young German footballers by German top-flight clubs bore fruit quickly. From 2002 to 2014 they won a World Cup, finished runners-up in another and made the last four of two more, while in European Championships they lost another final and twice made the semis.
By 2013, two Bundesliga teams — Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund — reached the Champions League final and a year later several of the Brazil World Cup winners came from the post-2000 academy drive: Mario Gotze, Mats Hummels, Manuel Neuer, Per Mertesacker, Toni Kroos, Thomas Muller, Mesut Ozil.
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Six of the squad who won the 2014 World Cup had been together in the Under 21s that were victorious in the European Championship five years previously. And four of them — Neuer, Hummels, Jerome Boateng and Ozil — started the final.
With 14 of the 23-player squad aged 25 or under, Germany appeared all set for continued international dominance, but those riches were squandered. They did make the semi-finals of Euro 2016, but failed to progress from the group stage of the 2018 World Cup, and were knocked out of Euro 2020 by England in the last 16.
Football requires constant innovation and, as Manchester United and Arsenal have proven in the Premier League, if you don’t change and adapt fast enough others will soon overtake you. It is perhaps why plans were set in motion by the German Football Association (DFB) for a central hub to bring everything together. If Germany could only better harness the power of the Bundesliga academies, they could become a dominating force once again.
They have produced some of the best managers in European football — Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel at Chelsea, Bayern Munich manager Julian Nagelsmann, recent Manchester United interim manager Ralf Rangnick — and the players are not lacking, but there was nothing connecting all the dots.
It’s a touch ironic, however, that England’s St George’s Park, the centre of English football tucked away in the Staffordshire countryside, has been where the DFB has sought answers to its international football problems.
Not so long ago, the English FA spent decades searching for its soul during two decades of disappointment. They looked far and wide, casting eyes to exotic candidates and alternative cultures. They failed to convince Brazilian “Big Phil” Scolari. They went for the silver fox Swede, Sven-Göran Eriksson, who ended up with mounting controversies. They tried Fabio Capello, who seemed to despise everything about being England manager aside from the £6m salary.
And the search took them closer to home. To Steve McClaren, who became the Wally with the Brolly when England failed to qualify for Euro 2008. Roy Hodgson was cultured, wise and well-travelled, but ended up being awful. ‘Big Sam’ Allardyce was the people’s choice, until that ill-fated night when over a pint of wine he was caught in a sting by The Telegraph which ended his England tenure after one match and 67 days.
Yet after exploring everywhere but within, the English FA eventually found what they were seeking on their own doorstep. Waiting patiently and unexpectedly was an understated coach who would lead the senior team to its most successful period in half a century. Gareth Southgate was quietly working away in the shadows of England’s Under 21s when he took over.
He’d had minimal experience in club management, but got what it meant to play for England, had been through it himself as a player, seen the dressing rooms divided by egos, knew first-hand the growing strength of the cohesive system from youth to senior level, understood the power of the St George’s Park facilities, opened in 2012, to find the finest of marginal gains and to create young English footballers who played a certain way.
There had always been that lingering feeling that the English people — and, perhaps, the team itself — always believed England were far better than everyone else did. That England were the joke of football that only they didn’t get.
And Germany were frequent tormentors who became bitter rivals. “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win,” Gary Lineker had said after Germany knocked England out of the last four of Italia ’90.
But suddenly — in recent times — that has no longer been the case. There were tentative nerves when England faced Germany at Wembley in the first knockout round of Euro 2020 last summer, but Southgate’s side won comfortably.
Now what the English FA has created — a centre at the frontier of footballing evolution, of player moulding, of cohesion building, of performance improvement — has become the envy of other nations and the place to learn best practise for the officials who have crafted and will run the DFB Academy campus, a €150 million facility that has been described as “project of the century” and the “Silicon Valley” of DFB national team director Oliver Bierhoff.
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Thirty years ago, the idea that anyone would look to England for how to run a national team would’ve been laughed at. Yet times have changed. Recently, St George’s Park was visited by Tobias Haupt, head of the DFB Academy, who wanted to see how best to use Germany’s own state-of-the-art facility stretching across 37 acres of a former racecourse in Frankfurt.
How most effectively to utilise the three-and-a-half grass pitches, five stories of offices, hotel rooms, training rooms and sports technology laboratory. Ways they can improve performance, from nutrition to fitness to brain training. “That was the focus on this trip, to exchange ideas, improving in certain performance areas,” Haupt told i.
When the DFB first started planning the project, it was hard enough to get clubs in Germany to share knowledge, let alone a fellow country who they will likely meet in major tournaments.
“I started as head of the DFB Academy three-and-a-half years ago and at this time a lot of people in German football they thought and worked in silos,” Haupt said. “They didn’t want to share knowledge.
“We created a cultural change. We talked a lot to the clubs, the coaches, the players, to the CEOs and convinced them we are stronger when we all work together and break out the silos and try to do things together.
“I would say it’s a different culture we created the last years and we are really open minded, not only regarding our national coaches but our international exchange of ideas is so important for us.”
Klopp and Rangnick are part of their core team who educate upcoming coaches, giving talks around two to three times a year. “It’s so important for us we encourage them and give them a chance to give their knowledge and experiences to the world class coaches of the future,” Haupt said.
“What we did at the same time, not only integrate them in our current education, we built up a mentoring system where coaches who are older who already have gained experience give their experience and knowledge to the younger generation.”
He added: “It’s the first time German football gets its own home. The difference, if you compare it to St George’s Park, is our new academy is located in the heart of Frankfurt, the heart of Europe.”
The prospect of Germany rising to prominence once again will strike fear into the hearts of teams around the world.
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