Why do people make statements like this when it's absolutely not true?
German football is turd
- Thread starter TwoSheds
- Start date
Don't you think both of these players got more leeway than others in the team?
They probably do like all the big players in all teams, but there is nothing indicating it outside of assuming that the best players have more influence. Now neither of them run PSG or have ever ran PSG.
Similarly someone like Neuer will have/had more leeway than others in the team.
R.e. the thread I gave the Bundesliga stick when I watched Sancho there (namely the laughably bad high defences), but I still respect the hell out of Bundesliga purely because it's not a league that's full of sugar daddy owners buying their way to success. The PL has a higher standard of football but the more rich owners pour into it the more it dies. Eventually gone will be the days a club like Luton will be able to come up.
In that sense you should be quite happy that Heidenheim just got promoted to the first league ever. No sugar daddy, from a city of just 50.000 inhabitants.
The result of the weekend was obviously pretty disappointing but the continuing turmoil at Bayern has had me thinking a bit. Kahn and Brazzo are gone now but I think it still remains to be seen if they really were the cause of the current crisis.
Bayern got much praise over the past 10-15 years or so for how they ran their club and rightfully so but part of the truth is that they were also quite lucky in one way or another. Transfers such as Robben, Ribery and Lewandowski are extremely difficult to reproduce because they essentially were/became top 10 players in the world and only ended at Bayern because the stars aligned at the right moments in time. To a lesser extent, the same is true for Thiago. And they were also blessed with incredible quality coming through their youth ranks in Müller, Lahm, Kroos and Schweinsteiger.
The optimist in me wants to believe that Bayern's dominance over the last 11 years wasn't just a result of them being financially ahead of everybody else but also of a golden generation that now has almost entirely retired, regressed or left the club. And despite their transfers are usually good value for money, they are still constantly losing quality because they don't have the means to buy players as good as the ones they aim to replace. Might turn out to be wishful thinking but apart from the UEFA salary cap, that's about the only hope I have for the league.
Bayern got much praise over the past 10-15 years or so for how they ran their club and rightfully so but part of the truth is that they were also quite lucky in one way or another. Transfers such as Robben, Ribery and Lewandowski are extremely difficult to reproduce because they essentially were/became top 10 players in the world and only ended at Bayern because the stars aligned at the right moments in time. To a lesser extent, the same is true for Thiago. And they were also blessed with incredible quality coming through their youth ranks in Müller, Lahm, Kroos and Schweinsteiger.
The optimist in me wants to believe that Bayern's dominance over the last 11 years wasn't just a result of them being financially ahead of everybody else but also of a golden generation that now has almost entirely retired, regressed or left the club. And despite their transfers are usually good value for money, they are still constantly losing quality because they don't have the means to buy players as good as the ones they aim to replace. Might turn out to be wishful thinking but apart from the UEFA salary cap, that's about the only hope I have for the league.
For a league with such a high level of foreign imports, I do see a slight sense of irony that some can be so disparaging and derisory regarding the standard of other leagues. Some seem to consider every league that isn’t the EPL, second-rate; I’ve seen it said about Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga.
For me it has a lot to do with the system and falling away from the principles of the former system - not with the players. You are the top dog in a league in which everybody gives you the ball and wants you to make the game - your first aim is to have your team being good on the ball not just against.
Bayern needs again a coach who is more into positioning and clean passing. And more about system play than pressing and hero football.
What Bayern needs is a no. 6 that is good with the ball but has defensive strengths to partner Kimmich. And atleast a no. 9 as alternative or plan B.
It's not turd because you don't get to choose which great teams you have in your league. It's just a bit silly. Because Dortmund kept feeding Bayern in the years where they were among the best in Europe. Like which other club do that in the world? If Dortmund retained most of their talents and they kept going, they could have ended the one horse race.
I fully agree on the system topic but player for player, I still think the gap in quality has gotten a bit smaller since the Guardiola days. And that's not really because the transfer business was subpar, it was just very difficult to maintain this kind of quality without a gigantic budget.
But in general, I expect Tuchel to be more possession oriented and think as well that this system is much better at making advantages in terms of individual quality count than Nagelsmann's playstyle.
Not a professional in this but got me thinking few days ago.
Feels like Germany youth system is outdated. It worked perfectly in 2000's and early 10's, but instead of evolving along, it got stuck and became very rigid.
A lot of "system players" on the pipeline, but not very talented, whereas in France there's talents coming in droves who can be accommodated in different leagues and not a specific system. I guess France youth system focuses on people and Germany on tactical systems.
Anything that's not people oriented is bound to fail.
Bayern in particular built a specific system gradually from mid 2000's, but still needed to import the top talents (Ribery, Robben, Lewandowski, etc.) to take them to next level and becoming a top team. Also, very lucky to have them performing consistently for more or less a decade.
Of course, it can also be that it's a talent drought in Germany for the last decade.
Feels like Germany youth system is outdated. It worked perfectly in 2000's and early 10's, but instead of evolving along, it got stuck and became very rigid.
A lot of "system players" on the pipeline, but not very talented, whereas in France there's talents coming in droves who can be accommodated in different leagues and not a specific system. I guess France youth system focuses on people and Germany on tactical systems.
Anything that's not people oriented is bound to fail.
Bayern in particular built a specific system gradually from mid 2000's, but still needed to import the top talents (Ribery, Robben, Lewandowski, etc.) to take them to next level and becoming a top team. Also, very lucky to have them performing consistently for more or less a decade.
Of course, it can also be that it's a talent drought in Germany for the last decade.
That's pretty on point and it is the reason the DFB has also restructured the youth system a few years ago. But this takes its time to really unfold. Still, I think the perspective is pretty good - Wirtz, Musiala and Adeyemi are exceptional talents and Moukoko could turn out an elite one as well.
But there's also a cultural aspect to this. German football was always about the typical German virtues: Work hard, be disciplined, team spirit, etc. The individual isn't really encouraged, kids are criticized when they lose the ball while dribbling, etc. For such a big football nation, Germany has produced few geniuses. Probably only Beckenbauer who belongs into the "greatest of all time" tier.
Wirtz is exceptionally talented in my opinion and has many of the traits other German talents seem to lack in that he is really hungry and aggressive. He is the only ausnahme talent I see from the ones you mentioned but we will see. But I agree with you that it is always the foreign players who are the dribblers and kunstlers in the Bundesliga. But who knows what happened to the German striker they all seem to have vanished?
I mean, I've been watching football since ~2002 and never witnessed a world class German striker. They've gone extinct a long time ago and I'm not even sure who was the last. It depends a bit on where you draw the line but I don't really believe Bierhoff, Klinsmann or Völler count. The last truly great one was probably Rummenigge?
Moukoko is likely the biggest prospect we had in this position so maybe he'll make the position great again.
Ive never seen how a league with donkeys like shane duffy, harry maguire, scott mckenna, james mcclean, darren gibson, teemu pukki etc running about it over the years can look down on any other league.
Klinsmann was surely world class? I remember idolising him as a kid and I’m fecking English.
I was too young to really judge him but I guess he's one of those cases that depend how strict your definition of world class is? The stats suggest he's a ~0.5 goal per game striker and as far as I know he wasn't really known for his allround game. So maybe comparable with someone like Cavani or Aubameyang maybe, just a better trophy haul?
Anyway, counting Klinsmann it's been 25 years without a world class striker - that's a really long time. It's been pampered over by Klose punching above his weight for Germany but still, is there another top nation that hasn't had a proper world class striker for as long?
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Yes, it’s strange that Germany hasn’t produced anyone for so long. Italy has had similar problems I think. Who was their last top striker? That line ended really with Vialli, Vieri and Del Piero. There was briefly a lot of hoopla about Ballotelli, but he was a very brief flash in the pan. And Cassano looked like he could be it, very briefly. But really nothing else. I guess all nations go through cycles. Look at Holland, from Kluivert, Bergkamp, Van Nistelrooy and Van Persie in succession, to really nothing in the last decade.
But yeah, 25 years is a really long time.
You dare doubt the Wout?
Yes, Italy is also pretty disappointing but at least they had a couple of very good ones in Luca Toni, Di Natale and currently Immobile who all scored >300 club goals. I guess you could count Gomez in that mould as well for Germany, though. But true, probably no world class striker since Vieri. Brazil maybe as well, had Ronaldo until 2004 or so and then Adriano for a brief period but that's about it.
In general it seems that many top strikers in this era come from countries that traditionally don't belong into the top tier. Ibrahimovic, Haaland, Lewandowski, Cavani, Suarez, Falcao, Lukaku and Kane*come to mind.
just kidding
I think the move from 2 striker system to lone striker affected the growth of the 9. Not many top clubs will trust a young player to be their sole striker, In the days of 2 striker formations You can pair a young with a mature striker, The young learns and gradually phase out the older
Many of those listed above when young started as support strikers until they got better and moved to the lone spot
A smaller club might be able to take the gamble and use a young striker but a bigger club with pressure to deliver will have doubts on using a young striker except he is Haaland
If Klose scored for fun during the majority of his career then he was world class, there is no such thing as punching above your weight during an entire career, you are either very good or you aren’t.
It doesn’t look good when you label the all time goalscorer of Germany and the WC as someone who was punching above his weight. That is of course my opinion, you can think differently no problem.
There is always this prejudice about football players who don’t have silky smooth technique or grace of movement, in my opinion the beauty of football is that you don’t need super technique to be come a world class player, you can excel in several departments on the pitch, all with a unique style.
You just can’t go on talking about a world cup legend saying he is average or overrated imo. It devalues football.
It doesn’t look good when you label the all time goalscorer of Germany and the WC as someone who was punching above his weight. That is of course my opinion, you can think differently no problem.
There is always this prejudice about football players who don’t have silky smooth technique or grace of movement, in my opinion the beauty of football is that you don’t need super technique to be come a world class player, you can excel in several departments on the pitch, all with a unique style.
You just can’t go on talking about a world cup legend saying he is average or overrated imo. It devalues football.
It’s really a sign of how the game has developed away from strikers and more towards inside forwards. Brazil haven’t had a great striker since Ronaldo really. As you say, Adriano all too briefly. But they did/do have Neymar as a world class inside forward, who in previous generations May have played more up front.
Generally though the global trend has been away from great strikers in that mould of Shearer, Batistuta, Romario etc. The most talented forwards seem to want to play slightly deeper, cutting in from wide positions. Haaland is one of only a handful of throw back, true #9s playing at a world class level today. Three of the others, Benzema, Lewandowski and Kane, are all closer to the ends of their careers than the beginning.
It’s why someone like Osimhen will command a fee of 125m, when twenty years ago he’d be a much more run of the mill player. Look at Liverpool. Their best front three in 30 years had all the goals come from the inside forwards and rhe CF was more of a facilitator than a goalscorer.
I think you're misingerpreting my post. Klose was much better for Germany than for his clubs. And Klose was actually quite good and easy on the eye for a striker with nice link up play. But he couldn't really reproduce his form for Germany for the clubs he played in, at least not consistently. I doubt anybody would have called Klose world class during any of his seasons aside from short tournament windows or maybe 1-2 seasons. He's a special case, really.
Klose was a pretty amazing striker:
He kind kind of wasted his early years playing for a struggling Lautern (compared to modern times, where he probably would have moved to a fancy team after his second season) and his best years playing for late stage Hitzfeld and Klinsmann at Bayern, being partnered with Luca Toni. I don't quite remember what went wrong for him under van Gaal, but that output at Bremen was something else. And it includes just one penalty in those three seasons (according to TM) if one was inclined to make that comparison his npG/A /90 in 05/06 would probably stack up quite well against Lewandowski's record breaking season.
The problems in the youth setup are much bigger than any particular position anyway. It's just lacking output all over. What young-ish is getting minutes at Bayern, that's a "proper" academy graduate? What player is at Dortmund? Leipzig? Leverkusen? Frankfurt? And Dortmund in particular have been kind of dominating the u19 competition for years now, without much impact on the first team. In the generation from 10-15 years ago there were Müller, Schweinsteiger, Lahm, Badstuber, Hummels, Sahin, Götze, Reus, Großkreutz, Schmelzer and probably some more. Something is just fundamentally going wrong.
If we look at the last NT line up it's
Ter Stegen: Gladbach
Wolf: Nürnberg
Kehrer: Stuttgart
Ginter: Freiburg
Raum: Fürth
Goretzka: Bochum
Kimmich: Stuttgart
Gnabry: Stuttgart
Wirtz: Köln
Füllkrüg: Bremen
Werner: Stuttgart
None of these clubs bar Gladbach has played in the CL in the last 10 years. Most of them spent some time in the second division. The academies of clubs that regularly occupy the top of the table seem to be failing.
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Klinsmann was fantastic to be fair, Völler was great. Bobic was pretty decent but since the 2000 they have been missing. Müller ist probably the last good one.
Bobic acquired a good reputation by playing in Stuttgart's "magic triangle", but I don't think his career was much to write home about after that. He joined Dortmund in his prime years and was considered a flop if I remember correctly. I'd put Kirsten and even Gomez ahead of him and if he gets a mention players like Riedle, Kuranyi, Max or maybe Kießling probably deserve one, too.
Bobic probably looked better than he was on that system with Balakov and Elber. Gomez was one of those players that should've been one of the best ones but never quite lived up to the hype.
Now they’re signing players in their 30s who have never won anything for obscene money from England. Imagine being this desperate.
The thread titles on here always crack me up, there’s something quite poetic about some of them.
Bayern favourites for the CL now?
Michael Owen agrees with the thread title.
Wouldn't it be because traditional forwards felt out of fashion, especially strikers ? Bigger kids getting routed to defensive midfield (and center defense, goalkeeping), more emphasis on pacey, hybrid players upfront ?
The biggest Euro federations being the first to incorporate such changes ?
Took Kane about a decade to score in August in the PL. Does it on his first attempt in BL.
Couple seasons ago, got a lot entertainment value from watching Stuttgart, but it looks like this season I'll be getting value from Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen. Really enjoying their style of football. Such a pity I won't get to see them compete in Europe's premier competition. On that note, I wish Union Berlin well, provided they aren't in the same group as Man Utd, A.Madrid or Newcastle.
The climate in this thread has been way too heated for far too long with both sides throwing petty arguments at each other. I’m suggesting a truce until the end of the year. Is that fine for everyone? Good.
But where do we get to be unashamedly petty and tribal instead
I'm with you, rather post all turd takes here than distribute them about related threads.But where do we get to be unashamedly petty and tribal instead
What about: "All leagues are so turd, that Bayern is now shopping in the PL."