2023-10-28 05:41:17
Last week I was in Frankfurt, Germany. The day after arriving I had a dinner, halfway between work obligation and social commitment, in a neighborhood quite far from my hotel, called Sachsenhausen. Unable, for obvious economic reasons, to take a taxi, I headed there on Tranway 11, which left me a few blocks away, on the other side of the river. Foresighted man that I am, I decided to leave early, in case I got lost. None of that happened and, to put it simply, I got out of hand and arrived too early: an hour early. So, near the restaurant I noticed that there was a square, and since the night was that of a mild autumn, I decided to spend some time there.
When I arrived at the square I discovered that it was bigger than I thought, and that there was also a soccer school. Well, I decided to watch the training of some kids who were about ten years old. First they carried out technical work on ball control, and if possible oriented control. The coaches, who were three, threw the ball at them – sometimes at the foot, sometimes at the chest, sometimes at mid-height – and the kids, who received it with their backs to the rival goal or from the side, had to stop it, turn and face it. as fast as possible. This work lasted about 20 minutes and, as time passed, the passes sent by the coaches became stronger and faster, making precise controls more difficult. At times I had the impression that I was not watching a soccer practice but an assembly line. Afterwards, a very short regenerative work came and a match was put together. Two minutes later, one kid dribbled at another, and the coach stopped the game. I don’t speak German, but from the gestures, I understood perfectly the coach was telling him that he had a free teammate, that instead of dribbling he should have given the pass. And he turned the play back: he put the players in the exact place they were when the game stopped, and the kid, instead of dribbling, gave a pass to one who was on the wing, so that he could then shoot a cross ( by the way: a rebound came and then the play ended in a goal).
The training reminded me of the reason for the long streak between 2006 and 2018 in which only European teams emerged world champions (and having always played the finals against each other, except once, when Argentina arrived, losing precisely against Germany in 2014). . To teamwork and mentality, German football, and European football in general, added technical quality work typical of Brazilian or Argentine football. It is true: in 2022 Messi and his team cut that streak. But that training session in a night square among little kids already showed the tactical and technical nature of German football. Dutch football has the team spirit of German, but with more champagne. Guardiola, direct heir to the Dutch school, once said that his ideal goal was one in which all 11 players would touch it. Our ideal goal is Maradona’s against the English: the individual hero who dribbles past the entire rival team. He touches it alone, but in the name of the 11.
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