So schauts aus!

Die sensationsgierige, profitorientierte Medienlandschaft gefährdet junge Talente und erfordert sensible Begleitung.

The question, "How likely is it to become a professional footballer?", occupied us last Sunday, and I had the opportunity to present a few calculations relating to the probability, at any given moment, of becoming a professional footballer. In the course of my research, I came across a scientific paper by Prof. Arne Güllich of TU Kaiserslautern, who studied talent development in Olympic sports. Then, as I searched further, I came across an interview that author Eric Scherer o

Can this organization and these framework conditions actually live up to the lofty training principles of DFB talent development? On the DFB Academy's website, under the tab "Information on the DFB Development Program," the principles are at least presented in grandiose terms! You need to know that the development program refers to the so-called regional-base training at the roughly 350 DFB bases. There, talented U13 and U15 players train together once a week for 90 minutes.

"Watzke Announces DFB Bombshell" is the headline of an article in which SPORT1 reports that Hans-Joachim Watzke, the DFB vice-president and Borussia Dortmund managing director, is setting in motion a reform of the reform in children's football (U6 to U11)! Excuse me, but the 64-year-old DFB vice-president is a successful businessman and one of the most influential — if not the most influential — football official in Germany, and certainly very knowledgeable in commercial matt

"I see Mats (name freely invented) as a player, not as a project," replied the young head coach of a U13 team at an academy (NLZ) to a worried father's question about the presumed playing time his offspring might get, at the point when, after three trial training sessions, the boy was facing the decision of whether to join the academy's team or not. For clarity: by "player," the coach meant something like a "squad player," while he referred to players with development potenti