The German Invasion

The Germans are leading Europe everywhere. Be it at heading the debt crisis Eurozone or on the footballing pitch where last season both Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich battled it out to secure European supremacy. However the German dominance was not created in one day. Rather it took some meticulous planning and years of efforts to take them to a place where they are today.

Germans have won three World Cups so far. The last being in 1990. After that they never had a strong team, but still they always managed to reach the latter stages of the World Cup. As Gary Linekar had famously said "Football is a simple game – 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end Germany wins". Runners up in Japan 2002 and third in both of the previous World Cup tournaments, and also coming second place to a Spanish side very much in their prime in Euro 2008 and semi finalist in the 2012 edition of the European Championship. But now they are all set to introduce some of the finest young players in World football. German clubs have never spend big like their counterparts in Spain, Italy and England.But still they have developed some great German bred players through their academy. Borussia Dortmund surprised many by knocking out big teams and reaching the final of the Champions League last year. It was all down to their super talented youngsters.They stuck to their young guns instead of spending big in the transfer market and it paid dividends.

Since the beginning of the 2002/03 season the German FA have invested a massive €455m into youth development. The amount of youth players coming through the ranks in the Bundesliga in the last couple of years is not just for the clubs to try and save money, it’s because of the amount of quality that is being produced by the new development set up. With this new set up the DFB- (Germany football governing body) have set up 366 regional bases where over 14,000 youngsters from the ages of 11-14 are trained by professional quality coaches. The German FA made centres of excellence compulsory for all the professional clubs. The centre at Dortmund for example has six normal sized pitches with two smaller, every side trains here from the under 9’s to the senior teams. This German Model will surely see them make a huge impact in the coming years.