Park Life

The Nuremberg defence.

Think he switched to older prey as he started losing his pace. Real predator.

Should have donned the alice band, hair gel and started playing in the hole.

There is something of the night about him.

It's a combination of factors. Are you being thick or bored?

Frankfurt/M. - Ten years after compulsory introduction of academies in German professional football, the League Association and German Football League (DFL) have delivered a positive report. 52.4 per cent of all current Bundesliga players are a product of the youth development facilities, which clubs have invested over 520 million euros into over the past few years. The academies, which were made obligatory at the League Association's AGM on 28 February 2001, are currently home to over 5,400 players across 282 teams. 'An undoubted success story' "The development of the academies is an undoubted success story which clubs, the League Association and the DFL can all be very proud of. The youth development work carried out over the past ten years is bearing more and more fruit, as proven by the many young players in the Bundesliga and in the German national team, as well as the success of the DFB's various youth teams. We are up there with the best in the world in terms of youth development," said League President Dr Reinhard Rauball. "We should also thank the DFB for their support in this area. The DFB has done some outstanding work with its concept of base camps all over the country and they have a proven expert in the field of youth development in Sporting Director Matthias Sammer." "We're now realising how important it was to make the introduction of these academies compulsory in the professional game. There is a large proportion of highly-qualified and competent employees and coaches working in the area of youth development who, in conjunction with schools, are helping to create an optimum environment for the development of young German players. The continued high standard of training is something the League Association and the DFL must ensure continues," said Christian Seifert, CEO of the DFL."We can't and won't rest on our laurels following the success of the academies. We need to stay on the ball and continue building the foundations to meet the challenges of the future. We'll also be increasing our efforts in the areas of integration and demographic change," said Andreas Rettig, Chairman of the League Association Academies Committee.

Really no idea what you're on about. The Germans had a similar crisis in the late 90's and what they did about it is laid out. Read the articles. They changed the structure of the game here top to bottom and it's now bearing fruit.

Just read the fukin articles.

This is a good precis of how the Germans turned it around.. http://pitchinvasion...the-bundesliga/ The Kirch TV conglomerate that had bankrolled the Bundesliga boom since the early ’90s collapsed in 2002, leaving the clubs in severe financial difficulties. Faced with huge, unsustainable wage bills, they found that the easiest way to cope was to release all the well-paid but fairly mediocre foreigners on their books and replace them with young, much cheaper recruits from their own youth teams. Seifert emphasised that essential to the system’s smooth operation was the unity between clubs and the German FA, achieved in part through the stipulation that no single entity can own more than 49% of a Bundesliga club. “This way you don’t have a foreign owner who doesn’t really care for the national teams,” said Seifert. “The clubs have a very strong relationship with the FA: we are all engaged in discussions [about youth development].” That is in stark contrast to England, where infighting between the FA, the Premier League and the Football League resulted in the Professional Game Youth Development Group being disbanded last year after just a year of operation. Since then, no single body has been in control of youth development in England. Instead, the power has rested with Premier League clubs. http://www.guardian....lopment-england "The academies are just one element of the Bundesliga that stands out. Ownership rules preventing any investor from immediately purchasing a majority stake in a club would prohibit the sort of buy-outs at Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Portsmouth. Affordable wage ratios also ensure that, although the Bundesliga is behind the Premier League in generating revenue, its clubs are the most profitable in the world." http://www.telegraph...ier-League.html

Well thought out. Mostly the Turkish and Polish immigrant community in Germany is the new working class - 'workers'. The Turks especially face racism here that is unheard of in Britain post 1981. Actually the Afghan community is bottom of the food chain and I suspect one or two of those lads to be on the fringes of the German side in a decade. NB There are 4 or 5 'italians' in the HSV and St Pauli youth set ups earning £800 or so a week who came here to escape unemployment...What odds they will graduate?? England needs to re-imagine its diaspora. The German basketball team is busy recruting Americans with German grandparents.

There were less foreign players here in the 80's, things could be left to chance. It's no longer the case. The FA like the Germans have to be proactive or admit Eng will never again win a major tournament. Ever. For one the strict finance rules in Germany makes it impossible to spend on massive wages and have debt. That cuts out a lot of fly-by-night foreign talent at a swoop.

When The Observer asked Fabio Capello why the English system is failing to generate young players of the calibre of Thomas Müller and Mesut Ozil the England manager swivelled in his chair and raised four fingers. An innocuous question had touched a nerve. "They [Germany] play players with different passports. Khedira, Podolski, Ozil, Boateng," the England manager said. "Germany didn't produce good players for a long time. I spoke with Stuart [Pearce, the England Under-21 manager] and the Germans have players coming from U21. Technically they are very good. We hope to find the same in England but you have to understand in Germany there are 70 million people. In England there are 60 million but for me one of the reasons is that there are only 38% English players in the Premier League." This bizarre and contentious answer suggests Germany crushed England 4-1 in last Sunday's second-round tie in Bloemfontein because they have raided foreign talent pools. At least it made a change from blaming "tiredness" and the referee. Capello is evidently unaware that England's cricket team could easily be renamed "South Africa in Exile", or that English rugby's Riki Flutey turned out for New Zealand Maori (the All Black second string) before pinning a red rose to his shirt and graduating to the British and Irish Lions. But with this latest shimmy to deflect the blame Capello could yet start a move away from the mono-national make-up of the team he manages. Should England naturalise top young foreign players from the big Premier League clubs? First, though, back to Germany. From Capello's list, Jérôme Boateng was born to a German mother and Ghanaian father; Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose popped out in Poland. Ozil is the son of a Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest worker); Khedira was born in Stuttgart to a Tunisian father and German mother. Cacau, meanwhile, is a Brazilian who acquired a German passport last spring. Seeking clarification on their policy on integration I asked Wolfgang Niersbach, the general secretary of the DFB, who said: "Situated in the very centre of Europe, there is no doubt that Germany has certain melting pot features, with people from many nationalities and of different ethnic backgrounds living together. "Mesut Ozil, whose family has lived in Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr area for three generations now, is a case in point. We know that many young players of Turkish descent preserve strong ties to the country of their fathers, so that when the time came for Mesut to decide which country to play for we deliberately refrained from exerting even the slightest pressure. "The DFB has made integration a key item on its sports-political agenda, and quite a lot of young players are beginning to reward these efforts by declaring their preference for Germany, just like Ozil, Khedira, Boateng and many others." While oversimplifying the German stance Capello has expressed strong opposition to the idea that English football should follow cricket and rugby down the road of passport pragmatism. Owen Hargreaves remains a one-off. Born in Calgary, Canada, to a Welsh mother and English father, Hargreaves came through the German system before declaring an allegiance to his current home. The rule in the UK is that a visitor can apply for British citizenship after six years of residency, or three if he has a native spouse. England's void at left midfield, for instance, would be solved by the appropriation of Everton's Mikel Arteta, who represented Spain at U21 level but is now eligible to switch to his adopted country. When Manuel Almunia, the Arsenal goalkeeper, expressed an urge to become an honorary Englishman the response was broadly hostile. A Peter Schmeichel would have encountered less resistance. It may take a world-class youngster to dissolve this opposition. Cesc Fábregas joined Arsenal at 16, seven years ago. If the Football Association adopted the more opportunistic German approach the best young imports could yet be reinvented as Englishmen and Britain's immigrant communities brought more into the fold. "Some of the young players produced in the Premier League are Welsh and some are Irish but not English," Capello clattered on. "In the Premier League, 38% of English players; this is the big problem because other countries are 68, 69, 70%. At AC Milan when I was in the academy we produced seven players who went through into the senior team but now there is no one. The same for Manchester United. You have to be lucky sometimes to have the moment when players are coming. At the moment there are none. "[sir] Dave Richards [the Club England chairman] asked me what I thought about the next tournament and the young players we might have to bring through, like Adam Johnson. Joe Hart will play next season for a really important team." For Capello to be citing Bobby Zamora as a solution to England's skills gap justifies the suspicion that 44 years of underachievement will stretch beyond half a century. "There must be a good crop of kids out there, otherwise how would we have been so successful at those age levels?" asks Emile Heskey, not unreasonably. "James Milner has been promoted to the senior squad and done well. So I think the future is in good hands but I must admit when you don't see too many young English players in the Premier League you do become worried." In this diverse society we still see an ethnically narrow England team.

Germany is developing youth players from all over eastern europe with an eye to them graduating to the German side. This is a fact and part of the programme set up in 2000 when there was a shortage of German talent. I live here and I know what's going on and what the Germans are upto. You live in NZ you clown.

I know Leeds United, Chelsea and Bradford made big strides into the Asian community searching for talent, but not much came of it. On the Indian sides I bet Sikhs would be good footballers as they are chunkier and more athletic than the 'brainy' nerdy Indian typeage. When I lived in B'ham a couple of my Asian mates played for Villa youth...Jasvinder was I'd say a good prospect but inj stole his career (it was that bad they had to helicopter him out). http://www.kickitout.org/574.php http://www.birminghamfa.com/News/2012/01/AsianFootballAwardsShortlistAnnouncedForWembleyStadium.htm

They now have youth football cultural programmes in the Philipines and Indonesia. Nothing left to chance.

We're in the dark ages let's face it.

South Africa is huge man. Also Eng is the 2nd language of Ghana.

Bet he doesn't.

AFRICA. Set up football missions in Africa sans the bibles and add the passports.

The clubs got overidden by the German fa. Change was top down.

We don't know cause we've made nil effort to do it. You can't say the soup is crap if you haven't even bought the ingredients. If we were germany there'd be training camps in all of our former colonies with quick fix passports for all 14-15 year olds. It's what GERMANY IS DOING. Can you get that into your head? Off the top of me head Arteta would have been beside Gerrard.

Big diff and I suspect the core of Stevie's point is that the Turks and Eastern Europeans that move to Germany love and play football.

There's always the back up plan. Build another national center!!!!!!! These are just meaningless edifices and white elephants there is little interest in the grass roots and little thought or intelligence goes into it. It's all about branding now and money making. Germany are spending nearly a 100m a year now supporting youth football in Germany, Czech, Poland and any other fucking country they can hive players from.

So the whole premise of the German system is wrong? Looks like it.. I was involved with some marketing for the FA about a decade ago and in all honesty Lancaster Gate was like the House of Lords. Nobody it seemed had a clue about football in that place. True story.

Spot on.