Julia Porath, mother of Holstein Kiel’s Finn Porath, criticizes the way talent is treated in football. Your parent representative concept has been mandatory for professional clubs since this season. A start, but responsibility continues to be shifted back and forth – at the expense of the young players.
It was November 11th of this year: Fiete Arp grabbed the ball in his own half, looked up briefly and played Porath free with a sharp interface pass. The midfielder processed the ball at full sprint and drove it into the net with a powerful shot. A dream counterattack, a beautiful goal, one of the reasons why you can love football.
High expectations and deep holes
The fact that the two of them were able to orchestrate this goal for the “Storks” shortly before the end of the northern duel against HSV in such a way that they were applauded by thousands of fans is not a given. Although both are only in their mid-20s, they have already experienced and been through a lot in football. You’ve seen the ugly side of the multi-billion dollar business and gotten a feel for how fast-moving it can be. And not just since they became professionals.
Because their career paths were anything but linear and were characterized by rise and fall, high expectations and deep holes, starting lineups and sidelines. Their stories show how difficult it is to become a professional footballer – and at least as difficult to remain one.
“You see how young people are just broken.”
— Julia Porath, mother of Finn Porath and coach
They are stories of constant pressure in a business that Julia Porath says turns young people into objects. Porath himself worked in youth football training centers for years and is now a coach. She advises footballers and parents who have concerns and need advice, and gives workshops in which she trains prospective parent representatives for clubs.
Her observation: “Football is increasingly about competition, like a small self-group. Everyone is only responsible for themselves, for their advancement.” Her accusation: “You see how young people are simply broken, how they lose the fun of what they enjoy most,” how they are “simply sorted out and broken because of it.” Their goal: “Bring more humanity into the machinery.”
Finn Porath: Twelve seconds Bundesliga
Porath and Arp both come from Schleswig-Holstein. Both were in the HSV youth academy, both became professionals for Hamburg during the Bundesliga era, but at different stations in the following years they also experienced how quickly the dream of the Bundesliga or being a professional can be over.
Take Porath, for example, whose Bundesliga career has so far been limited to twelve seconds: It was the eleventh matchday of the 2016/2017 season when the then 19-year-old came on as a substitute for HSV in stoppage time against Hoffenheim. Kick-off, throw-in, final whistle, out. In the following two seasons he went on loan 800 kilometers south to Bavaria to the then third division club Unterhaching.
Hype about a 17 year old
Arp has significantly more playing time in the Bundesliga and has even scored goals. With 17. These were goals that led to incredible hype in Hamburg in the 2017/2018 relegation season. And a move to Bayern in Munich two years later. All of that, it was too much for the young footballer: first chosen as the savior at HSV based on Uwe Seeler’s nickname as “Uns Fiete”, then at FCB as “Germany’s greatest talent” he was not accepted and only got a little chance.
“I would have preferred it if I had always been the first Fiete Arp.”
— Holstein striker Fiete Arp
Today Arp is playing his best season in professional football to date with second division autumn champions Kiel. Looking back, he says: “It triggered a yo-yo effect for me because I constantly tried to block it and said to myself: ‘No, no. That’s not true at all. You may be good, but Not that good.'” So “in a phase in which you should be brimming with self-confidence, he got into an ongoing conversation” with himself about how he wasn’t that good.
That “just at that point destroyed a little bit what made me so special: this carefree playing.” The image that the now 23-year-old has for it: “Kai Havertz was the new Marco Reus. Florian Wirtz was the new Kai Havertz, while Kai Havertz was still the new Marco Reus.” “These comparisons are brought up again and again.” He would have preferred “if I had always been the first Fiete Arp.”
Fear of not being taken over
Finn Porath also knows the title of “HSV Jewel” and the question of whether he is the “new Marco Reus”. And that from the times when he was still on the HSV campus, the young talent of today’s second division team. “Of course there is pressure,” says the 26-year-old. “There are moments when you’re afraid that you won’t be taken on next year or that you’re not good enough.”
That’s when he noticed that “this simple fun that it always was for me” had given way to the feeling that “there’s always a reckoning at the end of the year.” Three percent of talented people nationwide make the jump to professionals.
“In competitive youth football there are decisions that are tough.”
— Markus Hirte, head of talent development at the DFB
Markus Hirte, head of talent development at the DFB, sees this soberly: “In competitive youth football, there are decisions that are tough.” In these moments it’s “not very human,” he admits. But in all areas “where the performance principle applies, I run the risk of being disappointed.”
It’s exactly what Julia Porath criticizes today after years of being in the business herself: “The person, the footballer, is an object in youth football. Or in football in general. You never have the person, it’s always possible “It’s just about how well he performs. And that can’t be it, can it?”
St. Pauli goes in Junior area completely new ways
Second division team St. Pauli also sees it that way – and has reacted. For Benjamin Liedtke, head of Hamburg’s youth performance center, it’s about “strengthening the base with the players and parents and not letting anyone else in.” After all, at school it is “also normal that I always have a development discussion with students and parents and not with external people.”
In early autumn, the club announced that it no longer wanted to work with consultants in the youth sector. They want to build “holistic, sustainable training,” says Liedtke. For the Kiezkicker, this means focusing on players from the Hamburg metropolitan region. Porath and Arp also know from their stints in Bavaria how important social and family ties are.
HSV sets two Parent representative a
The city neighbors HSV don’t go as far as St. Pauli. Nevertheless, Julia Porath praises the work on Sylvesterallee. Since this season, a parent representative has been mandatory in the professional clubs – also thanks to their insistence. She presented the concept to the DFB last year.
At the “Rothosen” you try out two parent representatives – a more sport-oriented coach and a psychologist. Frank Weiland takes over the role of psychological support at HSV and says: “We don’t want to regulate this through one person.” That’s why they founded a team of five people, meet every two weeks, invite guests and keep asking themselves the question: “What are the next steps in parenting work?”
Clubs often lack the money for implementation
According to Julia Porath, parent representatives of the clubs should mediate and integrate parents into the work with their child. But this ties up capacity – among employees and also financially.
The problem: Apart from the very large clubs, very few clubs have the means to hire additional people, says Porath. At St. Pauli, for example, a teaching staff member takes on the role of parent representative.
Responsibility is passed on
And so a cycle is currently emerging in which responsibility is passed on. The clubs are groaning under the additional burden. Others are calling for the DFB to enforce the concept more strongly with the clubs. But DFB talent development boss Hirte says: “We are not the institution that checks and verifies.” There is “maximum personal responsibility in the sense of the clubs and performance centers”. For him, the clubs are “first and foremost the actors.”
And this is Julia Porath’s interim conclusion: “A beginning has been made.” But there is still a long way to go to achieve their goal of bringing more humanity into the machinery.
This topic in the program:
Sports club | 12/10/2023 | 11:35 p.m
