Tuesday , March 19 2024

Germany’s 2017 – A year of Success & Struggles!

For German football, 2017 was a year of success and struggles at the national and international levels of football as well as in its club football.

The highlight surely was the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup triumph in Russia with a Germany reserve side put together by FIFA World Cup winnig coach Joachim Löw, while the failures of German Bundesliga clubs in the 2017/18 European club competitions, UEFA Champions League and Europa League, is something to worry about going forward in the discussions about how to generate more revenues in professional German football to stay competitive against the other top leagues of Europe.

DFB (German FA) president Reinhard Grindel said, “It’s been a good year in terms of our sporting achievements for sure. Our qualification for the FIFA World Cup next year with a historic ten wins from ten games was impressive. Additionally, winning the FIFA Confederations Cup showed us what we can achieve with a bit of belief and team effort. Our UEFA U21 European Championship win was another example of that. It’s very exciting to know that we’ve got a whole new crop of fantastic young talents coming through the ranks.”

The new crop of talent coming through the youth development centres of the Bundesliga/Bundesliga 2 club is incredible, but clubs are struggling to keep them as younger and younger players are being transferred to the top German and European clubs.

Meanwhile not all is good for Germany at the international level as Germany’s Women, who have been at the forefront of the development and growth of the women’s game around the world are struggling in Europe at the moment with better quality opposition across the continent.

Speaking about it, DFB (German FA) president Reinhard Grindel said, “In terms of women’s football, we have to make sure to not lose our status as one of the world’s leading countries in the sport. Other countries have developed a lot recently. I’m confident, however, that they will succeed in achieving their next goal of qualifying for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.”

Another issue is the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) introduced in the German Bundesliga. It is a good and necessary step of introducing VAR, but the system currently in use and the way it is used, it isn’t perfect yet and needs to be worked on for everyone to understand.

Now we can look forward to 2018 and another bright year for German football…

About Arunava Chaudhuri

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