At FC Bayern there is criticism of how the German Football Association deals with top talent from its own offspring.
“The DFB sometimes fails to promote our players a little earlier,” said Munich campus manager Jochen Sauer to “Bild”.
The 50-year-old also gave specific examples of his thesis: “Malik Tillman was a German youth international up to the U21s, but then made a conscious decision to join the USA national team. He would currently be one of the top players in the German U21s. Josip Stanisic was a Germany U19 national player, was then invited to play for Croatia’s U21s and is now a senior there. Paul Wanner is currently considering whether he’d rather play for Austria.”
The DFB must “also think about the league structure in order to solve the problem in the transition area to men’s football,” demanded Sauer, who before joining Bayern also worked as an official at Red Bull Salzburg, VfL Wolfsburg and Hertha BSC .
“The level in the regional leagues is too low for potential national players and there are not enough young players in the third league, which was expressly introduced as a training league. And only three second teams are allowed to play in league 3 at the same time, but they can Young talents find it difficult to stay in the league. In the end, the traditional clubs tend to rely more on experience when it comes to promotion or relegation,” Sauer said.
Curious U21 statistics from FC Bayern
It is possible that the DFB “should also provide more financial incentives to use young players at the top level in the men’s division,” said the youth boss at FC Bayern. “In Austria, for example, clubs get significantly more TV money if they use young, local players. There is a similar mechanism in the DFL and in the 3rd division, but it would certainly be a suitable measure to use the corresponding ‘money pots of the Promotion of young talent’ should be weighted higher so that there is a greater incentive to use more young players in the 3rd division up to the Bundesliga.”
In view of the poor performance of the national team in the last tournaments and the disastrous preliminary round elimination of the German selection at the U21 European Championship, there has recently been increasing criticism of the youth work in this country.
Curious: FC Bayern last released a player for a U21 European Championship in 2006 (!). At that time, goalkeeper Michael Rensing traveled to the finals in Portugal, where they also ended up in the group stage.