With a uniform “German training philosophy,” the German Football Association (DFB) wants to ensure that its senior national teams become world leaders again. Recently, several prominent football personalities dominated the reform debate by complaining about the disappearance of results and tables in children’s football. The new DFB director for young talent, training and development, Hannes Wolf, has now countered this with reinforcements.
Hans-Joachim Watzke played a major role in the DFB holding a special press conference on children’s and youth football on Wednesday (September 27th, 2023). At the beginning of September, the BVB managing director and DFB vice-president described the ongoing reforms of children’s gaming operations as “unbelievable” and “incomprehensible”.
The fact that a high DFB official, of all people, trashed the plans of his own association in such a way seemed like a blow to the driving forces and also to Wolf, who had previously vehemently defended the so-called new forms of play.
Wolf about Watzke: “Everything is fine between us”
But now Wolf tried to smooth things over. “We’ve spoken on the phone twice, everything is completely fine between us. I don’t see it that closely.” It is even positive that Watzke initiated something. “For the first time in Germany we are having a public debate about youth football. We are really happy about that.”
Before Watzke, Cologne coach Steffen Baumgart and Austria’s national coach Ralf Rangnick were also upset about the elimination of tables and results. The background is that in the G and F youth, and optionally also in the E youth, the seven-on-seven club duels should be eliminated. They are being replaced by flexible small-field tournaments with smaller teams and sometimes four mini-goals.
Support for everyone, including the elite
Wolf expressed understanding for representatives from high-performance men’s football who express skepticism. “If you know that we’re currently lacking a bit of intensity and duel behavior in training, and then you hear it for the first time, you’ll think at first: Now we’re going to step it up even further. That’s why we want to start the educational offensive and put the whole thing in context back.”
The basic idea of the game operation reform and also the “German training philosophy”: If children and young people play for goals as often as possible in three-on-three or four-on-four games, “If we create resilience, then you can no longer hide.” The smaller and late-born children, who are not yet so strong, would benefit because they would then have more contact with the ball. “But that’s also elite support, because you often play with the three best against the three best.”
Support from the NLZ trainers
That’s why, according to the plans of Wolf and an eleven-person team of experts, such small group games should dominate training sessions across Germany in the future – both for the little ones in popular sports and for young people in youth performance centers. An optimal training session consists of two-thirds of game blocks and only one-third of warm-up and technical training.
Wolf emphasized that all U15, U17 and U19 coaches from the youth performance centers at a meeting in Nuremberg wanted this type of training to be implemented across the board. “The reference is the professional sector, where the talent pool is currently too small,” said Wolf, referring to Belgium, which has produced many top talents despite its significantly smaller population.
Balitsch, Di Salvo, Wagner and Bender twins as advocates
Most recently, the DFB was mostly just behind the debate because the sometimes populist words of the prominent critics got caught up. The association countered with better arguments, but less media force. On Wednesday, Wolf now had U21 coach Antionio Di Salvo and U18 coach Hanno Balitsch at his side. Co-national coach Sandro Wagner and the twins Lars and Sven Bender also had their say in video excerpts.
U18 coach Hanno Balitsch.
Wolf also contradicted the impression that reservations were still great. Compared to five or six years ago, a rethink has already taken place. “We’re getting this completely out there.” Criticism would only come from those “Those who take out a fragment, don’t look at the context and then say: But something is missing.”
Tables still not provided
When asked whether the DFB might want to record results at the children’s play festivals in the future, Wolf replied: “If you form four teams of three out of twelve players and the others too, then you can no longer make a table. Who is supposed to do the work of counting that?”
In addition, this discussion is completely irrelevant because “What we get is much more than what we lose if we no longer have a table in the children’s area. It’s still all about winning. If you play for six minutes, you want to win for six minutes. Then it’s on 0-0.” That is much more motivating than results like 16:1, which often happens in classic games.