Rösler Advocates German Approach Going into Double-Header

With managers of two capital clubs preparing their sides to lock horns with German opposition this evening, another based in London and born in der Vaterland has this week put in his two cent worth on the states of the rival football nations and their respective on and off-pitch ideals and infrastructures.

As Arsenal ready themselves for a Champions League visit from last season’s runners up Borussia Dortmund, while Chelsea travel to Gelsenkirchen minus Ashley Cole, who will likely be replaced by young Ryan Bertrand, to take on Schalke 04, Brentford head coach Uwe Rösler, talking ahead of his team’s League One clash with Bristol City at Ashton Gate, expressed concern for a land that he loves and wants to see maintain their status on the world stage.

“I am a big fan of English football,” Rösler revealed in an interview with The Independent, “and a fan of English life. I loved to play here, and to manage here. English football is special. You have the teams, the leagues, the stadiums, the fans, the atmospheres and the top players.”

However, the Bees boss pinpoints speed as being a key facet of the German game and a crucial contributor to what he sees as the vast gap between the Premier League and its German counterpart, the Bundesliga, source of both May’s finalists in Europe’s top club tournament. As if to emphasise the point, the country has been referred to this season by recent arrival and renowned attacking aficionado Pep Guardiola as “Konterland”, i.e. land of the counter-attack.

“When you ask in terms of pure football, in terms of the modern game, the German game is more modern than the English,” Rösler argues. “In terms of tempo, in terms of transition from defence to attack, in terms of speed, in terms of how many players each team is willing to commit, in terms of tempo of ball circulation.”

Rösler identifies the greater influence of youth, as a result of his compatriots’ more effective player development strategy, as vital in bringing progressive thinking to the German game, allowing their sides to push on and leave behind their English opponents in continental competition, at least in its most recent edition.

“In England, at 17, 18, they play development football, not competitive football, or they get loaned out to lower leagues where some of them struggle with the environment, with the type of football, and they lose motivation, they lose faith, and instead of kicking on, they fall off.”

While the Football Association tip-toe through the political minefield created by their own haphazard handling of forming a commission tasked with safeguarding the next generation of England internationals, Rösler insists that competitiveness remains at the heart of it all and that its absence is down to treatment of youngsters from these shores as they approach graduation from our famed elite academies.

“Now Premier League clubs are realising that the next generation is not there anymore, they are realising the development playing schedule is not good enough, in terms of the type of the football, the tempo, the competitiveness. It is not good enough to use all your skills and things you have learned from top coaches, not in a non-contact development game, where a result doesn’t matter. Clubs are realising it is not in place now.”

On the other hand, the outspoken 44-year-old dismisses the idea of using second teams, such as Borussia Dortmund II, practice of which is common in his native Germany, as he prefers the “history of English football, the variation of teams that you will meet” and feels that the use of feeder clubs to be “dangerous”, citing the case of Swindon Town’s apparent links with Tottenham Hotspur as representing an unwanted precedent in his book.

Despite the revamping of the Premier Reserve League and dividing of clubs into regional divisions just three years ago and the emergence of prestigious European youth cups now being contested with greater gusto, the FA task force still has an unenviable job to do in ensuring young players are given greater opportunity to impress at the top level at the earliest opportunity.

“In English football, you produce a lot of good players until the age of 17, 18. And what happens then? That is the main issue. There is not a lack of talent in English football; it is just what happens at a certain age.

“In German football, then they kick on. They get in competitive football with their second teams, who play competitive league football. Or they go right into the first team and get competitive chances there.

The unfavourable comparison is difficult to dispute. If end product can be defined in this instance by appearances for the national side, Germany are simply streets ahead. Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil is just 25 but has already surpassed the 50 cap-mark for his country, while his team-mate Lukas Podolski has featured on 111 occasions, scored 46 times and is not yet 29. These cases are not one-offs, either. Rather, they are representative of a clear trend: Thomas Mϋller, age 24, caps 46; Toni Kroos, 23, caps 39; Chelsea’s Andre Schϋrrle, 22, caps 28; Mario Götze, 21, caps 24. It is emblematic of a coherent strategy in place across the board, from Baden-Wϋrttemberg to Berlin; Bremen to Bavaria.

One glance down a list of English equivalents, on the other hand, merely allows for a far more convoluted analogy, admittedly affected by injury in the case of another Arsenal prodigy, Jack Wilshere, who would surely have more than the paltry 12 caps currently to his name were it not for lengthy lay-offs, even allowing for his tender 21 years. The same could perhaps be said for Andy Carroll (24, caps 9) and Jack Rodwell (22, caps 3). Not to mention Phil Jones who, at the same age, ought really to have appeared in more than 8 matches wearing the Three Lions and team-mate Chris Smalling, who is now 23 and has earned one cap fewer, although his story could just as easily be centred around poor scouting as time on the treatment table, having only been on the map for five years after being discovered at non-league Maidstone United by Fulham’s talent-spotters.

Even allowing for freak incidences, which perhaps exist in Germany but do not make headlines due to their bottleneck production line, the nearest England get to this level of opportunity being afforded on the highest platform comes in the form of Danny Welbeck, who has amassed 20 caps at only 22, Theo Walcott, again of the trend-bucking Gunners, with 36 caps at 24 and Wayne Rooney, 86 games into his international career and chasing down the all-time scoring record at the age of 27. Joe Hart’s record (26, caps 37) is also impressive and virtually identical to that of German number one, Manuel Neuer (27, caps 43).

Otherwise, the record of Daniel Sturridge (24, caps 8), Tom Cleverley (24, caps 11), Kyle Walker (23, caps 9) and co. make for grim reading, alongside Scott Parker’s measly haul of 18 caps despite turning 33 this month and Michael Carrick’s 31 outings, embarked upon at intervals of an irregularity not reflective of the contribution consistently made for his club of the title-hoarding playmaker, now 32.

Hopefully, with the promotion of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who, although only 20, has already acquired 13 caps and scored 3 goals and, more recently, Andros Townsend, Ross Barkley, Raheem Sterling, Wilfried Zaha to the first-team squad amidst talk of a call-up for West Ham United midfielder Ravel Morrison in the not-too-distant future, the pattern may be about to change.

Another positive with which the FA will presently be consoling themselves, which flies in the face of Rösler’s view of the English loan system, is the rise of Tottenham Hotspur’s man of the moment Townsend and, to a lesser extent, Bertrand - having started last year’s Champions League final in Munich - both beneficiaries of extended playing time during several loan spells away from their parent clubs, having been farmed out to a host of Football League clubs including, in Townsend’s case, Leyton Orient, Watford, Millwall and Queens Park Rangers.

The system is undoubtedly open to abuse, as this year’s rule change in the wake of Watford’s summer squad upheaval has shown, but is Rösler right in his appraisal of the two approaches? Is one more effective and aesthetically pleasing, to such an extent as to render the other primitive by comparison; even regressive?

The answer may, in fact, lie in the number of German players lurking within the swelling ranks of their English opponents this evening, with Arsenal’s roster accommodating Özil, 94-cap, 29-year-old defender Per Metesacker, teenager Serge Gnabry and the injured Podolski, plus the German-born “next Cesc Fabregas” Gedion Zelalem, 16, already a mainstay of the Germany youth set-up. Meanwhile, Chelsea can call upon Schϋrrle and have Marko Marin out on loan at Sevilla but their English squad members will be in no danger of running into any of their countrymen on their travels to and from the Ruhr region this week.

The willingness of young German players to ply their trade abroad may provide the best explanation for the adaptability of their national team’s play and its success in the international arena but does not necessarily elevate their attitude above that of those performing this side of the Channel.

Tonight’s action, showcasing a plethora of young stars from both nations, may give an early indicator as to which represents the immediate way forward, as both teams head into the home straight before next summer’s exhibition at the Mecca of marauding forward play in Brazil.