In the piece that he wrote for The Athletic, Philipp Lahm levied a lot of criticism on the youth system in Germany, but the former Bayern Munich star thinks that he has identified why the German national team has not been successful in recent years — the lack of “specialists”:
This ultimately leads me to a topic that German football has been grappling with for some time: why is it no longer producing as many specialists as it used to? There are hardly any natural centre-forwards like Gerd Muller,
Rudi Voller, Miroslav Klose, or centre-backs like Jurgen Kohler and Karlheinz Forster.
Academies are failing to answer one crucial question: what are we training for? What is our approach? While countries such as Spain and clubs such as Barcelona train their young players for years using the same system, with the same positional requirements and following the same procedures, Germany jumps from trend to trend. Possession, transition, street football, and positional play — all are important, but without a consistent approach, they lose their effectiveness.
In the end, everyone can do a little bit of everything, but few have mastered anything properly. The focus everywhere is on flexible players. But a footballer doesn’t have to be good at everything. They have to be very good at something. Unfortunately, defending, for example, is hardly ever taught in detail anymore: body position, timing, aerial duels, penalty area defence. The old craft is also missing in attack: running to the near post, working against robust defences, repeating the same movements until they become second nature.
That’s why I would like to see German football develop a common playing philosophy again at association level: ball-oriented, organised, clear, with a balance between attack and defence. If it implements such a philosophy from top to bottom, specialists will emerge again. Then Germany will get its holding midfielder who knows what he has to do in the centre. A centre-back who will be difficult to beat. A striker who scores lots of goals in the penalty area.
Then German football would make better use of its talent pool again.
Lahm philosophy here is an interesting one. Not everyone needs to be a versatile football — frankly, some have no interest in certain aspects of the game. However, many coaches do want well-rounded players, who can think through a variety of situations in different places on the pitch. Given Germany’s recent attacking woes, maybe some specializing is in order?
What do you think?
If you are looking for more Bayern Munich and German national team coverage, check out the latest episodes of Bavarian Podcast Works, which you can get on Acast, Spotify, Apple, or any leading podcast distributor…
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