Uefa Euro U-19 championship

blutgraetsche wrote:Where are the Russian linesmen when you need them...

Ranger was dropped for the Man U kid and this is the result.

Let me take a wild guess: This Ranger guy is a kid from Newcastle?

Is anyone actually watching the match? Is Ukraine winning deservedly?

blutgraetsche wrote:Let me take a wild guess: This Ranger guy is a kid from Newcastle?

Is anyone actually watching the match? Is Ukraine winning deservedly?

He's the kid that scored most of our qualifying goals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_UEFA_European_Under-19_Football_Championship_elite_qualification

He's also a target man, so it would make sense for it to be him and either Delfouneso or Welbeck, obviously it would be the first.

England are so Bayer Leverkusen.

Kimbo wrote:
He's the kid that scored most of our qualifying goals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_UEFA_European_Under-19_Football_Championship_elite_qualification

He's also a target man, so it would make sense for it to be him and either Delfouneso or Welbeck, obviously it would be the first.

If he is the most prolific player of the team, why didn't he start? Did he start in the tournament also, or only in the qualification? If the former is the case, maybe he is not fully fit?

blutgraetsche wrote:

Kimbo wrote:
He's the kid that scored most of our qualifying goals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_UEFA_European_Under-19_Football_Championship_elite_qualification

He's also a target man, so it would make sense for it to be him and either Delfouneso or Welbeck, obviously it would be the first.

If he is the most prolific player of the team, why didn't he start? Did he start in the tournament also, or only in the qualification? If the former is the case, maybe he is not fully fit?

He started the first 2 and by all accounts did well. It's all about status though, Welbeck has started every game for some reason.

BIG CLUB BIAS

kroesius wrote:England are so Bayer Leverkusen.

And Michael Ballack is a closet Englishman. True Story

So Ukraine win the U19's on home soil.

What a surprise.

Well, England was their opponent in the final, so maybe not that surprising...


But at least your lads qualified I guess.

blutgraetsche wrote:Well, England was their opponent in the final, so maybe not that surprising...


But at least your lads qualified I guess.

True. We've lost 4 consecutive youth finals in the last 5 years.

To be honest, nobody here is crying about it though.

Making it to two youth finals this year is a very good achievement, but this 'losing habit' should be a worry. It reminds me of our youth teams a while ago.

Matthias Sammer changed this by putting a high emphasis on winning mentality, right from the beginning, no matter which age group. This has paid off, and while the experience is valuable regardless of the result, winning a major trophy early in your career can really help later on. Nothing can replace the experience of winning.

blutgraetsche wrote:Making it to two youth finals this year is a very good achievement, but this 'losing habit' should be a worry. It reminds me of our youth teams a while ago.

Matthias Sammer changed this by putting a high emphasis on winning mentality, right from the beginning, no matter which age group. This has paid off, and while the experience is valuable regardless of the result, winning a major trophy early in your career can really help later on. Nothing can replace the experience of winning.

Personally, at the under 17/under 19s age groups its more about the performances than the results. Of course, merging a good peformance with a winning result is the aim, but so long as our youth teams are doing the basics well, ie displaying good technique, passing ability and innate tactical awareness, then the winning mentality can come later at club level as their careers progress.

One of the major criticisms of the old English grass roots system was that too much emphasis was put on winning at old costs - meaning kids were less willing to take risks and work on their natural talent.

Under 21's level is where winning becomes more important as they are no longer kids. But since there isn't much of a correlation between countries with successful under 21 teams necessarily equalling a successful senior side later on (and quite often only a few go onto have successful careers), it's certainly not the be all and end all. And the reason why the 4-0 result to Germany didn't cause nationwide manic depression...

Of course it should not only be about winning, but winning convincingly. That should be a given IMHO. Playing good football, which means creative attacking football, being 'dominant', is actually one of the major goals of our youth teams, the precondition of winning major trophies, because nowadays, you can't just rely on fitness and mental strength.

That's why Sammer and others at the DFB were actually not satisfied with the performances of the U21 team prior to the final, for example.

Sammer just understood that you need to teach the youngsters the 'winning mentality' from an early age. 'Performing well' (and losing) can often be an 'alibi' for players, they need to learn early that to win big tournaments, you have to give your very best, that you simply are not allowed to be 'satisfied' with less.

blutgraetsche wrote:Of course it should not only be about winning, but winning convincingly. That should be a given IMHO. Playing good football, which means creative attacking football, being 'dominant', is actually one of the major goals of our youth teams, the precondition of winning major trophies, because nowadays, you can't just rely on fitness and mental strength.

That's why Sammer and others at the DFB were actually not satisfied with the performances of the U21 team prior to the final, for example.

Sammer just understood that you need to teach the youngsters the 'winning mentality' from an early age. 'Performing well' (and losing) can often be an 'alibi' for players, they need to learn early that to win big tournaments, you have to give your very best, that you simply are not allowed to be 'satisfied' with less.

So, do you expect the German Senior side to dominate football in about 5 years from now, based on the success u17,u19 and u21 sides? Or will we never hear of a large number of these players again? This is the problem with reading too much into youth team results, although sounds like Germany are taking it very seriously. Will be interesting to see what the knock on effect is.

From an English point of view is that we tend to draft our young talents into the senior side from an early age, which often detriments the youth sides.

Owen , for example , played all of handful of games for the youth teams before being drafter into the senior squad. Same with Rooney.

Perhaps we don't value our youth sides enough. On the flipside, remove the hype and our kids seem to be pretty successful.

By the way - watching Bobby Robson tribute on ITV4, they're showing the entire England V Germany 1990 semi final game. Waddle''s just hit the post in extra time

The only thing that is for sure is that the future Bundestrainer will have a larger pool of talent to choose from. And it's not like our youth development has stopped after winning those titles, on the contrary, there are a lot more promising talents coming through, and the aim is to keep producing talent and win titles on the youth level consistently. Only then the senior team will benefit in the long run (as will the league btw.), as could be seen in Spain's case. Spain dominated youth football for years before their senior side eventually won Euro 2008.

There are no guarantees, especially not in football, but after the necessary reforms were made almost a decade ago, the DFB has set the foundation of what could (definitely not must) become a new era of German dominance in international football. Basically, Germany for the first time in history have a proper, professional youth setup. And knowing how football crazy this country is, no other country has this many kids playing football for clubs on the amateur level, the potential is there to do much better than in the past, disappointing decade at least.

The dominant years in the 70s and 80s were mainly due to the generation of players who learned to play football in the ruins after WW2, true "Straßenfußballer" (street footballers). They never had a proper football education at a young age, but still managed to develop great skills. The generations that followed after that simply didn't have that experience, they grew up in a rich and prosperous country. A country that neglected youth education completely, and basically just relied on the huge number of footballers. As we all know, this backfired badly, ultimately leading to the Euro 2000 disaster.

But without the Euro 2000 fiasco, there would be no reforms. So in restrospect, it was important that it happened.

blutgraetsche wrote:The only thing that is for sure is that the future Bundestrainer will have a larger pool of talent to choose from. And it's not like our youth development has stopped after winning those titles, on the contrary, there are a lot more promising talents coming through, and the aim is to keep producing talent and win titles on the youth level consistently. Only then the senior team will benefit in the long run (as will the league btw.), as could be seen in Spain's case. Spain dominated youth football for years before their senior side eventually won Euro 2008.

There are no guarantees, especially not in football, but after the necessary reforms were made almost a decade ago, the DFB has set the foundation of what could (definitely not must) become a new era of German dominance in international football. Basically, Germany for the first time in history have a proper, professional youth setup. And knowing how football crazy this country is, no other country has this many kids playing football for clubs on the amateur level, the potential is there to do much better than in the past, disappointing decade at least.

The dominant years in the 70s and 80s were mainly due to the generation of players who learned to play football in the ruins after WW2, true "Straßenfußballer" (street footballers). They never had a proper football education at a young age, but still managed to develop great skills. The generations that followed after that simply didn't have that experience, they grew up in a rich and prosperous country. A country that neglected youth education completely, and basically just relied on the huge number of footballers. As we all know, this backfired badly, ultimately leading to the Euro 2000 disaster.

But without the Euro 2000 fiasco, there would be no reforms. So in restrospect, it was important that it happened.

Is this bit true? What about Brazil? I've heard that the US also has an incredibly high number of amateur football players. Luckily they (coaches/fans/parents) don't give a shit about taking soccer seriously, otherwise the rest of us might as well stay at home.

I think it is. In Brazil, there very likely are more kids playing football in general (e.g. on the street), but not as many for (amateur, professional) football clubs.

The DFB is the largest (and richest) FA in the world with more than 6 million members.