Football Thread No. 9

If you have a point HK, you should make it rather than leaving people to guess.

That again? 20 % of the German population is made up of immigrants and their descendants. Why would you play for a country that you have never lived in (or only for 2 years in the case of Podolski and Marin)?

holy king said:

poldi didnt make it under the pressure that comes with playing at bayern munich, ran back home crying to mummy köln and subsequently had a few average seasons there.

marko marin looked a tad promising once and now the question is what the hell chelsea are getting an average player from an average german club for if not the bench.

both players are on the fringe of the national team.
both players are very clearly lower profile players of lower quality than the ones mentioned above, so what the hell is this tripe about?

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Podolski has 95 appearances and 43 goals for the national team. I don't think you can say he's on the fringe. I guess he'll again be a starter at the Euro and by the end of it may have 100 appearences at age 27. Ballack only has 98.
But yes, his club career is decidedly average. He had a good season this year though and was by far Cologne's best player.

I'm still cringing though that Chelsea bought Marin. They'll love his dives.

If the Australian team was only Australians with "Australian" sounding last names it'd have no players. Don't see what's so weird about Germany having migrant names in its team.

kronic said:

That again? 20 % of the German population is made up of immigrants and their descendants.

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100% of the German population is made up of immigrants and the descendents of immigrants.

Pangur Bán;11468637 said:

100% of the German population is made up of immigrants and the descendents of immigrants.

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Yes, but 80 % are considered ethnic Germans and that should be the only ones allowed to play for Germany or what is it what you want to say?

Kronic, you're too smart for such straw man arguments.

Personally, I think it's reasonable to play for the country you were born in and your parents were from if that is possible, rather than move to a country and cherry-pick which one to play for based on your chances of international success. I feel sorry for smaller countries who lose their best players in this way, but Germany are of course technically entitled to play with the laws for their own advantage just as France did with such success a few years ago.

The only French players that won the WC 1998 and Euro 2000 and weren't born in France are Vieira and Desailly (not counting a couple others who were born in places such as Guadeloupe or New Caledonia, which, for better or worse, are part of France). Desailly was adopted by a frenchman while he was still a toddler in Ghana and both players lived in France since before they were 10.
Then there's Trezeguet, who's a bit of a special case: born in France but grew up in Argentina (argentine father of french descent).

The team that then reached 2nd place in the 2006WC had Makelele in the same situation as Vieira. Boumsong afaik is the only one who moved to France to play football, but he was a fringe player.

Why should Zidane play for Algeria if he was born, grew up and learned to play football in France, the place where his family settled 2 decades before he was even born?

You could make the reverse point too: why should Algeria et al. have more rights over players that seldom, or never at all, set foot in their soil prior to becoming famous footballers?

In the case of Zidane, it is clear that he should probably play for France (if you substituted France for Scotland, I'd be annoyed if he didn't ), but you'd understand it if he played for Algeria (crazy professionally though).

It's really not all that complicated . As always with having room for rule bending and maneuvering, the strong get the advantage.

So who did you have in mind when you made that reference to France?

P.S.: As for Scotland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_Feruz.

MCdread said:

So who did you have in mind when you made that reference to France?

P.S.: As for Scotland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_Feruz.

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You mentioned quite a few of the players already, but you are right that they didn't go as far as Germany now. The Faruz thing is not right either, but it's not happened yet, and I have a suspicion that if he turns out to be good enough (men from that region develop faster, so I'm sceptical as yet) there's a chance England could engineer some way to take him. I'd be happy for Scotland to thieve players from Ireland though, as they recently stole two players with no connection to Ireland except through an immigrant grandparent.

Pangur Bán;11469090 said:

You mentioned quite a few of the players already, but you are right that they didn't go as far as Germany now. The Faruz thing is not right either, but it's not happened yet, and I have a suspicion that if he turns out to be good enough (men from that region develop faster, so I'm sceptical as yet) there's a chance England could engineer some way to take him. I'd be happy for Scotland to thieve players from Ireland though, as they recently stole two players with no connection to Ireland except through an immigrant grandparent.

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I still don't get what you mean by "going as far as Germany now". Would you mind to elaborate on it?

yeah, i mean clearly the german national team is the most despicable team there is, but i dont get what the ethnicity of those eleven arrogant freckers has to do with it.

I wish we had found a way to steal Alaba from the Nigerians Filipinos South Germans.

kronic said:

I still don't get what you mean by "going as far as Germany now". Would you mind to elaborate on it?

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I don't think the meaning is very mysterious, i.e. France did not rely as heavily on players taken from smaller countries the way Germany relies on them now (or the way Holy King relies on the Straw Man ). You really wanna go over this same old argument again? We all know where it goes. Posters with German sympathy are happy that the pretexts or excuses used in each individual case justify it, others are not.

Well, I can only think of Cacau as having come to Germany to play football as an adult. He hardly qualifies as having been poached from a weaker team/country. He's not that important to the team anyway.
Klose and Podolski came as young kids (like Vieira and Desailly above). Marko Marin was a baby afaik.
Some years ago there was Asamoah (also a kid).

None of these players, except Klose and Podolski, have a significant role in the team.

The non-ethnic germans Özil, Khedira, Boateng, Aogo were all born in Germany.

No, I think they do qualify as being "poached" (a bit strong, but good for rhetorical emphasis). I'd bet a lot of money the same guys, were they going from/had parents from Germany to/in, say, Poland or Turkey or Angola or India, would still play for Germany. The whole case by case pleading I find unconvincing. The bigger picture is more convincing, top players with stronger claims to smaller countries playing for the bigger one; in this case leaving, undeniably, the composition of the German national team way out of line with the German population.

I don't think Poland would've won the Euro / World Cup with Podolski or Klose. Or Turkey with Özil or Tunez with Khedira. Two guys don't make a difference. Look at Real Madrid, for example; full of stars and they haven't accomplished the success they expected; not a single CL title since 2002.
The point I'm making is, people that think that Germany "stole" these players are simply ignoring the facts. These guys either have a strong German background (they either lived there since childhood, or have German parents, etc.) or where simply born there, even if they are not "ethnic Germans", they consider themselves citizens. Probably the only exception being Cacau. The thing is, Germany is a nation of inmigrants. Its position in Europe makes it an attractive country for people to live in and seek opportunities their home countries can't provide. Take them away and Germany still has a strong side to compete, with players like Schweinsteiger, Thomas Müller, Manuel Neuer, Phillip Lahm , etc.
Simply stating that Germany "stole all these players from poor little countries and that's why they're good" is not an accurate thing to say.

BirraImperial said:

Simply stating that Germany "stole all these players from poor little countries and that's why they're good" is not an accurate thing to say.

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of course, no-one said that; instead of setting up straw men (all of you), you may instead want to ponder whether or not Germany would be regarded as a serious threat for Euro 2012 w/out getting more than its fair share of eligible double-nationality top players.

MCdread said:

None of these players, except Klose and Podolski, have a significant role in the team.

The non-ethnic germans Özil, Khedira, Boateng, Aogo were all born in Germany.

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Klose, Khedira, Boateng and Aogo all have one German parent. Even from a ethnic point of view, they are as much German as they are Polish/Tunisian/etc. Podolski's parents (like Klose's) came to Germany way before the Iron Curtain fell. Özil is third generation, meaning that his father already had grown up in Germany. Germany is their home - not Turkey, Tunisia, Ghana or any other place. That's why they should play for the German side. Besides, I wonder how well Khedira's Arab is?*

For the record, none of them is unchallenged in the German side. Özil now has Kroos and Götze in his back, Khedira the Bender brothers, Podolski Schürrle and Reus, Boateng a ton of central defenders and Aogo has Schmelzer and Höwedes. All of these guys are Germans by any definition you could come up with. As strange as it may sound, the "foreigners" could all drop out and the quality of the squad would barely be lower. That, admittedly, was different a few years ago. Klose is the sole one who only has another half German (half Spanish) contender: Gomez. But generally, you don't need to worry about "real" German players. There are plenty of unstolen Germans coming through the youth ranks these days. The reforms made a decade ago really seem to bear fruits.

Also, I challenge the claim that the composition of the national side doesn't reflect the composition of the German society. In big German cities like Frankfurt or Stuttgart or in the Ruhr area, half (!) the population aged 15-20 are foreigners or of foreign descent. One may like it or hate it but the ethnic German is slowly dying out.


*Poland's Lewandowski made an interesting complaint:

Lewandowski has history. Last year he had a go at several of his team-mates for not speaking Polish well enough. Referring to the players who grew up in Germany or France but have now decided to pledge their loyalty to Poland, he said they did not have to be fluent, but that they could at least try to speak the language.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/apr/25/england-euro-2012?INTCMP=SRCH

So the Poles are happily fielding players that never lived in Poland and don't even speak their language. I guess it's only because the Germans stole their players.