Quote from the EA Footballmanager series: There are no young and old players, only good and bad.
You probably mean a quote from Otto Rehhagel
But it’s true. It makes no sense to nominate perspective players now, but rather players who will help immediately.
Of course it should be about players who help immediately. But if you look at the gallery of national teams with “old” players, only the rough football years that began with the 1998 World Cup and ended after the Euro 2004 are represented. That was the worst phase the national team has ever had, even if it can perhaps be topped now with the 2018 World Cup until *whenever the horror ends*.
Of course it was an extremely bad phase. But was it the average age of the players? I think that we really didn’t have 24 young, super talented players back then. One should not forget that although Berti Vogts set up one of the oldest teams, a few years later he was part of the task force that drew up the concept from which the vintages emerged, the golden generation around the 2010s formed. In my opinion, the early 2000s simply didn’t have any good, young kickers.
Think about what kind of wooden team Rudi Völler made it to the final of the World Championship in 2002. Ballack and Schneider were able to kick really well. Otherwise it was really lean food that some people had to offer. Back then, Klose could basically only head. Over the next 10 years, he developed in a way that was unforeseeable when he kicked the ball at the age of 22. Yes, and then there was Kahn, who really held on superhumanly except for the finale. Just a few highlights. Jens Nowotny, Christof Metzelder, Jörg Heinrich, Marko Rehmer, Jens Jeremies, Thomas Linke etc. And I’m not mentioning players like Thomas Brdaric or Christian Rahn, who nobody knows anyway. For example, we naturalized Paulo Rink back then because we REALLY had no players. Well, Mehmet Scholl, at 31 years old, was still someone who could do something. But just 31 years. It wasn’t as if a 24-year-old Mesut Özil was left at home. There simply weren’t any players like that. And, sorry Phillip Lahm, Rudi Völler’s performance in 2002 was perhaps the best performance by a national coach that we have seen in the last 20 years. Because getting to the final with such a rumbling group was an incredible achievement.
Many people don’t even appreciate the player material we had between 2010 and 2020. Think about what kind of generation that was with Lahm, Schweini, Klose, Boateng, Hummels, Gomez, Neuer, the Bender twins, Kroos, Gündogan, Khedira, Reus, Müller… oh man, I can’t stop… Yes, that was it the golden generation of Germany! They played at Real Madrid, Bayern etc. Only at the top clubs. Maybe we had something like that during the Kaiser era and we also had a strong team in 1990. But I think the 2010-2020 generation was even the best. And, sorry for the delay, the Poppope eater won exactly one title during that time and managed to be eliminated once in the preliminary round and once in the round of 16. It was nice football, but we could have won a lot more titles with the team. From 1996 to 2023 we won exactly one World Cup. This is absolute lean quark by German standards.
So, now Nagelsmann nominates nobodies and players over 30. Why does he do this? Because he’s not interested in young players and wants to play rough football? No, because we have 15 really good central midfielders in Germany, but there is a lack of real 9s, real wingers, real 6s and good full-backs. Or just take a look at the number of goalkeepers we have who are younger than 30!! Quite simply, everything that Berti Vogts and the team of experts at the time had built up was run down in the years under Löw, Bierhoff and his clique. A clear concept for youth support was no longer the focus. Much more important was to stage the summit mission, rebrand the national team as “the team” and go jogging on the lake in Russia in front of cameras. Tikki Takka was the focus and looking good. That’s why we only trained top players for central midfield and false 9s.
And now we have the salad. It’s not Jogi who has the salad, but Julian. He now tries to nominate a team that consists, for example, of real 9s and real 6s. A real team that can also defend. A team that plays forward when they win the ball. And not after winning the ball, tikkit and takkat the ball back and forth 20 times until the opponent is built up at the back and our central defenders have to push it to the halfway line. Only to then realize that central defenders are slower than lightning-fast counterattackers running towards them at 36 km/h. And, what a surprise, the IVs sometimes lose a duel against guys like that. And then the counterattack player runs towards our goalkeeper in a 1v1. By the way, this is the blueprint that every mediocre team has used to beat the crap out of us over the last 6 years. Because we play with 8 central midfielders but without holding 6. Nagelsmann wants to have a balanced team on the pitch again. And if he only finds in-form players over 30 because the required player material is not available in their early 20s, then so be it.