Rangnick is also stunned
Ex-national players find new DFB ideas “grotesque”
08/10/2023 10:38 am
The DFB is working on the future of German football and its return to the top of the world. The association’s latest ideas are controversial. Two former national players are stunned, a national coach sees the “completely wrong wheel” turned.
Ex-national players Thomas Helmer and Dietmar Hamann have sharply criticized the planned youth reform in the German Football Association. “Meanwhile, I am surprised by everything that is decided and done by the DFB. I think they have many problems of their own. They should be solved first and foremost. But I already find that grotesque,” said the 1996 European champion to the TV station World. With the changes, you almost say goodbye to the idea of performance in childhood and adolescence, Helmer said: “It’s definitely going in the right direction.”
Even Hamann can’t get much out of the innovations. “I can see few meaningful steps there,” said the 49-year-old and confirmed: “For me: without a result, no experience. That’s why I can’t understand the step that the DFB has taken at all.”
“Minimize pressure to perform”
With the beginning of the 2024/2025 season, new forms of play in the youth field are to be implemented nationwide. These essentially provide for smaller team sizes on smaller playing fields and replace the previous competitive offers as fixed formats. For example, no more championship rounds should be played in the G and F youth “to minimize the pressure to perform and to focus more on the sporting development of the children,” as the DFB justified.
Instead, game afternoons and festivals with several teams and playing fields are planned. The most important goal of the reform in the age groups U6 to U11 is to “promote the fun of the game in the long term with a type of football that is suitable for children”. Austria’s national coach Ralf Rangnick had sharply criticized football training that was organized without pressure to achieve results. “If we, at the ÖFB, came up with the idea of explaining to me that there are no more tables for six to twelve year olds, no results at the end and no list of who scored the goals, then you get it the one with me has a problem,” said Rangnick in July at the International Trainers’ Congress. “You’re turning the wrong wheel.”
“Going in the wrong direction”
There are changes in the A and B juniors: The Bundesliga, which is currently divided into three seasons, will be replaced by a DFB youth league, all clubs with a performance center are permanently seeded and can therefore not be relegated. “You can discuss that in the U17s and U19s. But the fact that the children are trained in this performance principle will reduce the fun,” said Hamann.
Helmer argues that the performance aspect is also important for individual development in the youth field. Decisive situations are mostly decided in the mental area, said the former Bayern Munich professional, “and if you don’t allow young people to make mistakes, to develop a personality, I think that’s going in the wrong direction.” .