Max Eberl, sports director at Bundesliga soccer club RB Leipzig since December, has called for a return to the so-called German virtues.
“We need players like Enzo Fernandez or Rodrigo de Paul with the Argentines. Good footballers who act with total dedication and teamwork,” said Eberl in the “kicker” interview: “This greed to win every single duel is got lost a bit with us.”
In addition, the long-time manager of Borussia Mönchengladbach pleaded for a rethink in the evaluation of players.
“We take the boys the chance to develop too quickly because they may not be that good technically or tactically, but they play an outstanding role as a figure on the pitch or in the dressing room. We should put this heart for the cause back into the We have recently developed the German virtues such as robustness and the will to assert ourselves a bit.”
“We need to get more boys into football again”
He sees good approaches for meaningful changes, but these must be implemented quickly.
“Time is clearly against us, because we will only see in the next ten to 15 years what we have missed,” warned the 49-year-old: “We have to get more boys back into football. And one question would be something like: Does it make sense to have youth academies up to U8 or should we leave the boys in their clubs and start with the NLZ later?”
The working group of the German Football Association (DFB), the so-called task force, founded after the World Cup debacle in Qatar, around Matthias Sammer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, also does not see Eberl as a “saviour”. Although she is “top-class, can support and initiate certain things, but does not automatically bring us the EM title in 2024”.