Are you guys watching the final ? France leading Italy 2-0 inside 20 minutes. France are very strong. It's a shame that Germany didn't play against them in this tournament. Would have been a fantastic match.
Germany should look at the way France are coaching their young attacking players. Imagine Germany had forward prospects as good as Martial, Dembele, Mbappe and Augustin coming through? Would be all set for domination.
Though we certainly could stand to learn from how they school their attackers, lets not go overboard with our glorification of the french youth system. As for all of the incredible forward talent coming through the french systems...and it is incredible; as major talents like Coman & Martial could well end up after thoughts when Dembele & Mbappe catch up...but the midfielders that they produce are much less cultured and skillful than what we are pumping out consistently. Their overemphasis on physical traits cost them Mahrez, and almost cost them Griezmann...both of whom couldn't get into french academies because they were too small. And though Varane/Laporte/etc. have great potential; it's been a long time since they last produced a CB who was anywhere near as good as Boa or Mats. Plus it's not like the Eggestein's, Brandt's, and Sane's that we produce are that much weaker than the french crop...certainly not by enough to neglect all of the other differences between our two nations' development systems.
Rabiot is a very skillful and cultured CM. He is a top class talent playing for a top club. Their playmaker in this tournament Amine Harit looks really skillful. Not sure how highly rated he is at his club(Nantes) but he performed very well. Zouma, Varane, Laporte, Kurzawa, Dembélé,Umtiti, Coman, Martial, Griezmann, Digne, Kanté, Pogba, Mbappé, Augustin, Blas, Areola, Sidibé, Rabiot, Kondogbia, Fekir, Boutobba, Lemar, Cornet, Tolisso, Cognat, Rabiot, Edouard, Reine-Adelaide are all under 25. France are scary good.
Rabiot is, but he's also struggled to really break through at the club level, where Veratti is typically paired with the more crass physical types that France usually pump out in the midfield. Lemar is a very elegant and cultured player, though in a more advanced role. Cabaye was also a pretty cultured player before he lost it. So those players do come from their academies. But we have players like this in just about each jahr-gang, while for them they are few and far between. They certainly are pumping out a lot of talent and should grow into a major threat to us...even if it took a tremendous sequence of events for them to best us at these euros...but those young talents of theirs still have a long was to go to make good on their potential; and I was primarily just addressing some of the grass is greener thinking behind some of the comments about their forwards. All in all our system is more productive right now, even if it would be nice if we could pick up a few things about developing really elite forward talents.
I found good highlights of our crazy match against Netherlands http://video.eurosport.de/fussball/...krimi-gegen-niederlande_vid817655/video.shtml
so at the end of summer this was the only bad result. -Euro 16: Semis -Olympics: 2md place -U-17 Euro: Semis and then u19 Euro played at home, group stage exit and barely qualified to the u20 WC.
For me only the Euro defeat is disappointment as youth football is all about nurturing young players and bringing up them...Olympics has been fantastic in my opinion