 GERMANY |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Team
Goalkeepers
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Past Glories Given their illustrious track record the German populace must be forgiven for reminiscing about yesterday’s heroes, superb players that created legendary teams, resulting in football’s ultimate prizes time after time. Such stuff as dreams are made on. Few fantasists or fanatics fancied Germany’s chances of success in Japan/Korea 2004, but with both Spain and Italy failing to defeat South Korea, Germany were left facing a semi-final against the plucky hosts to reach (a joint record with Brazil) a seventh final, and Germans don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Home Rule Current manager Rudi Völler was not popular going into last summer’s Finals and anything short of a run to the latter stages of Euro 2004 could see the DFB (the German FA) looking to someone else to lead the country to success in the Fatherland in 2006. Current favourites include Stuttgart’s Felix Magath, Bayern Munich’s Ottmar Hitzfeld or the much-fancied Dortmund manager Mathias Sammer . Rumours aside not much is wrong with German spirit, they still possess that amazing application with a tremendous determination to win, national traits don’t change. No the problem has been one of personnel and personality. World Class The charismatic Michael Ballack has arrived and become the complete player that Germany hoped he would. Since moving from Bayer Leverkusen he has grown not only in confidence but physical stature, resulting in a presence unwitnessed before, the transfer to Bayern Munich has made a man of him. Ballack’s metamorphosis into - well take your pick from Bernd Schuster, Lothar Matthaus or Stefan Effenberg is good news for German football but unfortunately unique! A fault in Production The blossoming of young talent into top class players isn’t quite so productive, still the search goes on to replace greats such as Gerd Müller, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge or Jurgen Klinsmann, leaving pale imitations taking the positions of legends. The incomparable array of talent that came off the conveyer belt defined German football for many generations. The production line can still muster the odd classic every now and then, but not a crack set of original greats. The manufacturers remain dedicated but the technicians may find that future models fail to sparkle, leaving just reliability as their main asset.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||