The top choice to partner Klose in attack this summer, IMO. How do you rate him, and how do you think he will mesh with the other players?
I think he teams up better with Klose than Kuranyi but I also feel it would be a pity not to play Kevin. Maybe as a joker in the last 30 minutes or so? However, if those three are fit for the EM I am not too worried.
Having seen his progression as a player in the last two seasons, the only way from here is up. He is a big talent and very good for his age. He'll definetley be taken to Austria and Switzerland this summer and will most likely switch off partnering Klose. I doubt Loew will make him the officiall starter but he'll give him some good playing time for sure.
lol, so everyone gets a thread now I hope that podolski improves his game that extra bit in the 2nd half of the season and then partners klose. It's a reliable duo. Klose and kuranyi next. Then Klose and Gomez.
I just watched his post-match interview from yesterday. Where are all these young intelligent and eloquent players suddenly coming from? This may well be documenting the shift/expansion in the 90s in who plays and watches football.
In the interview? Eloquent, self-confident (he was angry about the warmup conditions in Bremen) and giving detailed answers. If he continues to develop as a footballer, here's a potential (co-)leader for the national team. Mertesacker - Kroos - Gomez, that'll be our axis of leadership Re: the match, the hattrick says it all...
You're a bit late noticing this. It had already filled me with joy to see our players and coaching/management giving eloquent and intellignt interviews at the press conferences in the past couple of years, coming out ahead of arguments without being rude or embarassing and speaking to the international press in fluent English. What a contrast to the Effe/Lodda/Möller/Kahn area. I have to say I am really proud of the way these guys are representing us. Okay, Podolski sounds funny in interviews and Kuranyi has this hilarious lisp but they are both nice lads. And I think you are right, there seems to have been not only a generation but also a cultural shift in football in the past 5-10 years or so. Klinsmann and Bierhoff were already part of this developement and now they have taken charge.
Oh well, I don't mind them breaking a few legs on the way. As long as they can justify it eloquently and with a nice smile in interviews I'll be happy. Given the twenty years patter it is about time for a win now. I am really rooting for some of the players who have been in the team for a long time who have only a couple of years left in active football and who have not won anything with Germany yet. Some of them have been so close several times.
Yes, Schneider frings and ballack for me. So what were lodda and moeller like in interviews. I mean, I never watched them in german and there were hardly any english ones...
It's not necessarily that they are only nice guys, like I said, Gomez was bitching authoritatively about the conditions. I can see Kroos being similarly convincing, and perhaps if needed Mertesacker in later years as a hardened international defender, though a little less. But unlike Lahm (and in his way, Jansen), who will always be nice guys.
Matthäus as a character is the stereotypical 1980s player, a real dumbass, ambitious and rather narcissistic. Möller is mainly known as a whiner, not stupid, but not eloquent like Metzelder etc.
I reckon lodda played a part in moeller never truly settling in the national side. I mean, he was awesome for juventus for 2 years and had the "it" factor in terms of aesthetics that matthaeus never had.
They made me want to jump out of the window clinging to my telly that just broke through the glass in an desperate attempt to commit suicide to stop it's agony. Lodda was not much better in German mind you. I especially like that one: "If I were a woman I would play with my breast all the time." If you heard that one you know all of them and this was still one of the wittier ones. There are whole books filled with insane/dumb quotes of these players.
Is that translated from german? What a moron. I do remember hearing about the one where he asked a cameraman to focus on a teammate's groin during a casual interview somewhere...
Here are two Andy Möller quotes: "My problem is that I'm always very self-critical, including towards myself." [The classic] "Milan or Madrid - at least it's Italy!"
Let me reply with a Hässler quote: "In school, there were lows and highs for me. The highs were the football."
It's 16 still (9 or 10 years after kindergarten). But that doesn't really matter, I think. Especially during the 80s, football was the "proletarian-only" sport par excellence in Germany.
In Germany, isn't school compulsory till 18? Here, everyone has 13 years of schooling excluding kindergarten. Of course people can drop out in year 11 or 12, but this almost 100% precludes you from any tertiary study.
Many leave school after 9 or 10 years, but that usually leads into a "dual" professional training which is partly based in a company and partly in school. I guess those aspiring to become professional footballers either learn another job this way (like Klinsmann, Klose,...), or there's no more formal schooling for them whatsoever (Kroos has done 10 years).