Five offbeat rules bring success to Germany
- By Stephan Richte
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E-mail China Daily, July 17, 2014
Rule No. 3: Smart organization beats big money.
The key reason for the emergence of the bunch of excellent young players is simple: proper focus at the club level on grooming real talent at home as opposed to teams relying on the power of big money to buy expensive talent. This is the one dimension where Germany's talent to organize well came to fruition.
And this is where Brazil, Argentina and many other teams are now openly talking of emulating the German approach to soccer - systematically and in a very holistic sense.
Rule No. 4: Individuals matter.
A good team spirit has almost always been a hallmark of German teams. In a refreshing departure from past practice, the 2014 edition of the German soccer team has a lot of individual stars. And the main reason they excel is that they have an intuitive understanding of each other, of where they are going to be on the field.
Rule No. 5: Democracy in action.
Germany is widely viewed as a top-down nation. The "boss" calls the shots, the rest click their heels. So much for that stereotype.
The "boss" in German soccer is the national team coach, Joachim Loew. He certainly has his share of idiosyncrasies. In fact, he has been known to act in an authoritarian manner.
During the World Cup, Loew imposed his preferences on which positions certain players should in and came up with a weird and risky style of defense that could have easily ended in disaster. And yet during the World Cup a very healthy democratic debate took place in the German media that questioned the wisdom of the coach's offbeat decisions.
In a triumph for German democracy, the debate ended with the coach ceasing to insist on playing a strange defensive style. Popular opinion won, and the German team - which became more solid defensively - went on to win the Cup, the first by a European team in the Americas.
The author is the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Globalist.
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