Foreign Lilliputians Taking Over Germany…Still

By: chris | January 7th, 2008

About a month ago we posted a link in the Daily Dose to a very good column by Ralph Hogistein (he’s good, you should check him out, really) regarding the dominance being displayed by the little men in Germany; specifically three names: Diego, Rafael van der Vaart (yes, he’s still somewhere in Germany, not wanting to be in Germany), and Franck Ribery. Well, his thoughts have been confirmed, as the German sports mag kicker has held a vote, and the top 3 players of the season thus far are those aforementioned names. The winner, by a sizable margin, is Diego, which came as a complete surprise to absolutely no one (unless they’ve been in a coma).

The top 3 ran like such:

Diego – 44.9%
Ribery – 21.5 %
RvdV – 16.8%

The strangest part about the whole thing – well, maybe not strange, per say, but a little eye-opening – is that the highest German only got 4.3% of the vote (that was Simon Rolfes of Bayer Leverkusen).

For a country with a national team which many consider the favorite to take home the spoils in Swissaustria next summer, how does that figure out? Die Mannschaft has a whole three players who could be considered “key contributors” playing outside of the home country: Michael Ballack, Christoph Metzelder and Jen Lehmann. And we all know the last one could be jumping onto a moonlit ferry back to the homeland at any moment now. So the lot of the national team is still playing within the borders. My guess is this is less of a German thing than an evolution of sports thing.

Anywho, the voters got it right, and it’s Diego. At this pace, the German Footballer of the Year award will likely be his as well. Neither Ballack nor Metzelder have really done anything outside of the country to warrant consideration; and I think we all know about Jens Lehmann (maybe a little too much, in fact). An honor which would make Diego one of only the second ever foreginer to win the award, with the other guy being another Brazilian attacker with Bremen (at the time) who had an eventful last week.

So, in honor of Diego, a little YouTuber video of his exploits. Enjoy.

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Category: Bundesliga, Europe, World Football

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Jan

I like the RVDV abbreviation. Gives him a little Star Wars touch.:-)

Anyway, Diego and Co. have clearly stolen all the attention this season and in a poll like this one (they asked 275 Bundesliga players to vote), there's always a winner takes it all tendency. Exemplified by Diego getting twice as many votes as Ribery. So I'm not that worried that Rolfes only got 4,3% of the votes as best German player. And those 4,3% might just be 12 of his Leverkusen team mates voting for him or something like that. You also need to factor in all the long term injuries of players like Schneider, Frings and Hitzelsperger, who missed too many Bundesliga matches, to make any impact on this vote. The poll is also very midfield centric, so it says little about other positions.:-)

About German players abroad and their contributions to the teams: I think this should be seen in perspective to where German football was 1,5 years ago and where it stands now. Ahead of the World Cup, Michael Ballack was considered Germany's only star player. An assumption shared by pundits both inside and outside of Germany. A good World Cup run and a confident Euro qualifying campaign later has helped to put more players on the radar of big European clubs. Reputation goes a long way when it comes to overrating and underrating players. So, I think the low numbers of Germans playing abroad is more of an artifact of the dark ages between 1996 to 2006. Those ten years represent a whole lost generation of players, who suffered from a youth systems that was designed towards a Bundesliga made up mostly of German players, who would receive their education on the pitch week in week out. This situation has obviously changed and both the clubs and the German FA have reacted to this, so more and more talented young players are coming through the youth systems. As Juliet pointed out, a good portion of the players in the national team are still very young.

Player by player there are a couple of European national teams who look more impressive on paper (Italy, France ...). By 2010 the squad list of the German national team should also read more like a who-is-who of European football again (here's hoping at least).:-)
Juliet

Diego is awesome. And adorable.

As far as I know, before the World Cup, only one German on the national team was playing outside Germany -- Lehmann. It remains to be seen whether Timo Hildebrand (Valencia) will develop into a key contributor for Euro 2008-- I'll cross my fingers for my big blond keeper.

Many of the national team players are still young and playing for their first professional teams. I think that as they make names for themselves, some will move on (Mario Gomez, for one). Not that I think they need to -- the Bundesliga is immensely popular in Germany and I'd prefer it if my boys stayed right where I can keep watching 'em.