How Wales is benefiting from German football’s youth revolution – and its flaws

How Wales is benefiting from Germany football’s youth revolution – and its flaws

The fall of the Berlin Wall. Reunification. David Hasselhoff’s defection to Wales. A lot has changed in Germany since the last time there were two Welsh footballers playing in the Bundesliga and the scale of the political transformations have been mirrored on the pitch.

Today’s Bundesliga is unrecognisable from the one in which Mark Hughes and Wayne Thomas played for Bayern Munich and Hanover 96 during the 1987/88 season.

Then, German football was characterised by physicality, a dependence on a “winning mentality” and a reverence for the experience. Now it’s famous for its technicality, tactical innovation, and confidence in youth. 

Ethan Ampadu has joined RB Leipzig, where the average age of the squad (23) is lower than at any other club in Europe’s top five leagues.  

At Schalke, where Rabbi Matondo is starting his second season, it’s also lower than that of any Premier League side.

Last season, Matondo was among players aged under 21 who made 492 Bundesliga appearances between them. Players of that age made 248 appearances in the Premier League, which has two more teams than the German top division. 

Leipzig gave the second-highest number of those appearances to youngsters and it didn’t go unnoticed by Ampadu. 

“I have followed the club in recent years and have seen how well young players have developed here and how much potential this club has, so it’s the perfect step for me,” he said on joining.

Germany’s football revolution, from which Welsh football is now benefiting, officially began just a month after both Ampadu and Matondo were born in September 2000.

An embarrassing performance that summer at Euro 2000, where Die Mannschaft were knocked out in the group stages with one point, ended the last remnants of resistance to a youth development programme in planning since another poor performance at World Cup 98.  

Germany’s football authorities responded that October by making academies compulsory for professional clubs, investing millions to train an army of new coaches to replace parent managers and building new facilities across the country.

The level of education which coaches received also increased: it now takes 800 hours to obtain a UEFA Pro License from the German FA, compared to 200 with the English FA.

The result was a golden generation of players and coaches. Germany won the 2014 World Cup with one of the youngest teams at the tournament and their winning goal in the final was scored by a then 22-year-old Mario Gotze. It proved definitively to Germans that you can win things with kids – if they’ve been coached properly. 

One of the system’s most celebrated coaching graduates is Julian Nagelsmann, who became the Bundesliga’s youngest ever manager when, at just 28-years-old, in 2015 when he was appointed by Hoffenheim. 

He took a club fighting relegation to the Europa League and then Champions League with high-pressing football, an innovative use of technology in training and by developing young players like Serge Gnabry, who had previously struggled in the Premier League.

Who better to oversee Ampadu’s transition to regular first-team football this season? 

Nagelsmann was handpicked to take over at RB Leipzig by Ralf Rangnick, who took temporary charge last season and will remain the club’s sporting director. 

Rangnick is credited with doing more than almost any coach to modernise the country’s football philosophy. ‘Das Reboot’, Raphael Honingstein’s book on the reinvention of German football, dedicates a whole chapter to his role in convincing his contemporaries of the merits of zonal marking and ‘gegenpressing’ – closing down the ball immediately after losing it in order to prevent a counter attack and win the ball back high up the pitch.

Matondo will also be schooled in that system as Schalke’s new manager is another Rangnick disciple, former Huddersfield Town boss David Wagner.

Two of our brightest talents being exposed to the most advanced tactical concepts by some of the best-trained coaches in the world can be no bad thing. 

Although it’s actually a glitch in the system that has arguably given Matondo his break in the Bundesliga. 

Far from having a stereotypically structured approach, the high-pressing football predominant in Germany creates controlled chaos. It’s why Jurgen Klopp describes gegenpressing as “heavy metal football.”  

The system requires quick, instinctive attackers to capitalise on the chances created by stealing the ball through the press. But Bundesliga academies aren’t producing them.

“Football in Germany has been over conceptualised,” German football expert Manuel Veth wrote recently. “…To make up deficits in youth development in the early 2000s German clubs and the DFB perfected the development of youth talent without keeping in mind the importance of individual technical abilities.”

Matondo – and perhaps now Harry Wilson – are part of an influx of foreign flair players brought in to fill the void left by academies accused of over coaching homegrown youngsters.

Welsh football is profiting from both Germany’s youth football revolution and its weaknesses. 

(Featured Image: Lewis Mitchell)