Why are there so many successful German-American soccer players?

during the cold war there were over 200,000 american soldiers stationed in germany after the 1990 the number dropped to about 57,000 in 2009
so you get by that over time a fair number of dual citizenship children

idk if i would say that the half american once are paricular succesfull look at turkey they had 8 players that were born in germany in their last call up or poland they have a lot of players that got their soccer education in germany too

only German NT player of the top of my head (was part of the team that won the EC in 1980 and finished second in the WC 1982 and 1986) with a US backround would be Felix Magath tho his father was from puerto rico so technicaly i think not american?

women .. there would be Stephanie Jones for germany .. but i have no idea about womens soccer there might be more

 

The first German-American soccer player who played for the German NT was Erwin Kostedde in 1974. He also happened to be the first black player to represent Germany. He only made three appearances for the NT, but he had very strong competition (Gerd Mueller, Jupp Heynckes).

Jimmy Hartwig and Felix Magath are also German-American soccer players who won the German championship and European cup in 1983 with Hamburger SV.

Jimmy Hartwig played for Germany twice. He became an actor after his soccer career ended.

 

Because the training and academy systems are far superior there than here. Also, from my experiences, many soldiers love sports and naturally if living in Germany and raising a child, would push their child to get involved in sports. In Germany, it's soccer. Here, they have numerous options.

Then, you consider most soldiers are in pretty good shape and athletic, and when that's combined with their youth system...voila, a handful might make it to the top. Really not that tough to figure out when you consider how many Americans athletes here have parents who were in the military. Same thing, except for in Germany the choice is soccer.

 

Your premise is absurd. What do you define as success? How many German-Americans have achieved this level? Currently, a handful of German-American players are competing for USMNT rosters spots mainly due to USMNT German coach, hope and potential. None of these players have achieved greatness in Germany! No other National coach in USA or elsewhere would be trialing Terence Boyd with the full national side. The lad has never played 1st team football.

 

Tom Dooley comes to mind as someone who could have played for Germany back in the day...but David Wagner and the Mason brothers were never of that caliber. Jones, Johnson, Boyd, etc as a group show lots of promise.

But of course since then Germany has done lots of poaching of Polish-German, Swiss-German, and other mixed nationalities to play for their side. They sure did want Neven Subotic....

The main reason there are so many German-Americans currently on Klinsmann's radar is 1)mass - lots of prospects in this category; 2) he is actively scouting for such players and 3) such players are more likely to want to play for someone of Klinsman's pedigree vice Bob Bradley (who they've never heard of).

 

If you look at the years when Dooley played I seriously doubt that with that competition he could have played for Germany in that time, maybe in the dark 8 years from 1997 to 2005 but that was when Dooley's career was over already.

The only german with connections to Switzerland that comes to mind would be Oliver Neuville and he isn't really swiss, he was born in Switzerland to a german-belgian father and a italian mother never had swiss citizenship tho.

With the exception of Cacau all the Germans with other roots have been born in Germany or lived in Germany since they were little so I don't think you can call it "poaching".

And I never heard except for speculation on Bigsoccer that Germany wanted Subottic.

 

But weren't most of the current crop of German-Americans identified while Bradley was still the coach? Jones got his first call-up in 2010; Chandler got his first cap in March 2011; Boyd played for the U20 team in May 2011. While JK has helped, you really need to credit Rongen for recruiting this folks.

 

You might argue why are there so many German-Americans in the German basketball system?

A quick check of the recent German national team call-ups in major events includes:

Elias Harris, Christopher McNaughton, Demond Greene, Robert Garrett (not counting Chris Kaman who qualified through his grandparent)

 

Especially true in our all-volunteer military, where soldiers tend to be self-selected. It means most were more athletic than average even before they started basic training, and probably means better genetic material (for sports, at least) to begin with.

I'd add to this: many of the troops stationed in Germany have become soccer fans themselves. Anecdotally, at least, a pretty high percentage of American veterans follow German clubs. By the time they become fans of the game, they're too old to develop the technique to play at a high level, but they can certainly encourage their children to play.

 

I'm pretty sure he's still alive.

He would have been called up in the early 90s, but an injury prevented this.

You can not get German citizenship through your grandparents. He got German citizenship soley to play for the basketball team (athletes do not have to go through the citizenship process if they can represent Germany in the olympics). The grandparents stuff is just an excuse, because usually it's tried to avoid plainly stating that athletes are fast tracked for citizenship.

 

IIRC, Dooley was called up three times by Germany. The first two times, he suffered injuries just before the German NT camps started, so never actually joined the team. The third time, he was called up by the US for the same dates, and decided that, having been injured before NT camps twice before, he just wasn't meant to play for Germany.

 

I was just thinking about this. Suppose there were 200,000 US troops in Germany until 1994, each on 3 year rotations. They started drawing down after that, but let's just say they were at 200,000 the whole time. So maybe there were 1 million US troops who had the opportunity to father children who could grow up in Germany and be a pro soccer player age now (20-35). Of those 1 million, at least half were probably already married men when they went to Germany, and thus unlikely to father german children. At least 10 percent were women who, if they had a baby in Germany, probably brought it back with them when their tour ended. That leaves roughly 400,000 single men who might have fathered German children and left them there with their mothers. How many actually did? And of those kids, only half were boys. I'd guess there might be 50,000 German-American boys in that age bracket who had American soldiers as fathers. Is that a wildly inaccurate estimate? I don't know. The army probably doesn't keep statistics on how many of their soldiers have German baby mommas, but let's say there were 50,000 boys. If that cohort of 50,000 produced 10+ professional soccer players, would that make it among the richest pools of soccer talent in the world?

 

There were 100,000 babies born to American fathers and German mothers in the decade after World War 2. They would be great grandparents of today's soccer players, great grandchildren not being eligible.

But the number of American troops in Germany contributed to increase after 1955, reaching its peak in 1960 then falling slowly.

Is there the possibility that over a million Germans have an American grandparents making them eligible to play for the States?

 

Because Klinsmann taught them how to have belief!

 

The US doesn't grant citizenship based on American grandparents. For a child born abroad to be a citizen, the citizen parent must have lived in the US at least five years before the birth, including at least two years before age 14, or both parents must be citizens with one of them having lived in the US for one year at any time before the birth.

So if a US serviceman fathered a child in Germany in 1959, that child would be a US citizen, but if that German-born US citizen never lived in the US, no US citizenship would be passed on to the serviceman's grandchildren born in the 80s or 90s.

 

You don't have to be an American citizen to play for the USA. The Ireland team in the 1994 World Cup was primarily comprised of non-Irish citizens with Irish parents or grandparents..

"The [FIFA] rules now state a player must either have lived in a country for at least two years, or have a parent or grandparent who was born there."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/3523266.stm

 

You most certainly do. FIFA uses the term "nationality" but that is effectively a synonym for citizenship. Nationality is based on each country's laws. The FIFA statutes require the player both have the correct nationality and meet at least one of the four requirements demonstrating a true connection to the country. If a player meets condition (c) by having a grandparent but doesn't have the "relevant nationality" under the country's laws, he is not eligible.


6 Nationality entitling players to represent more than one association

1. A player who, under the terms of art. 5, is eligible to represent more than
one association on account of his nationality, may play in an international
match for one of these associations only if, in addition to having the relevant
nationality, he fulfils at least one of the following conditions:
a) He was born on the territory of the relevant association;
b) His biological mother or biological father was born on the territory of the relevant association;
c) His grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the relevant association;
d) He has lived continuously on the territory of the relevant association for at least two years.

The Irish players were eligible because the Republic of Ireland grants citizenship based on parents and/or grandparents, so they were citizens. Also this was before the current wording of this statute.

 

OK you got me.