2009 UEFA U21 European Championships in Sweden Preview

This blog’s coverage of German youth teams consists of a sum total of one post. The one about this year’s U17 Euro victory. We could have written another one about last year’s U19 Euro victory, I guess.

So we are admittedly looking like glory hunting youth football bloggers, who only ever wake up every other major trophy won. To shake off that tag, I decided to write a post prior to a major tournament for a change. Since this is the U21 it also means that there are actually a couple of players on display, who might yet be a valuable addition to the senior side’s efforts to qualify for the World Cup in 2010.

The Road to Sweden
Germany topped its’ group on goal difference ahead of Israel and the team’s overall performances left quite a bit of room for improvements. Things didn’t look much different in the play-offs against France, where the team had Manuel Neuer and a late goal by Benedikt Höwedes in the second leg to thank for eventually securing a place in this year’s tournament.

The Coach
Dieter Eilts was looking after the team during qualification, but the DFB felt his coaching was not in line with the FA’s philosophy for youth football and generally, as you read above, the football wasn’t really that good. The DFB eventually secured the services of Rainer Adrion who had done an excellent job developing young players at Stuttgart and he will take over the next generation of U21 players starting on July 1. Until then U20 coach Horst Hrubesch has agreed to temporarily look after the U21 side as well and take them to the Euros. As a player Horst Hrubesch was a late bloomer and never played on any German Uxx youth teams and didn’t debut in the senior side until he was 29. He didn’t bloom too late though, as he won almost any trophy imaginable with his club Hamburg and also won the Euros in 1980 with Germany, scoring both goals in the final. As a youth coach with Germany he guided the U19 to a Euro title last year and will take them to the U20 World Cup this year.

Horst Hrubesch is also a bestselling author and if you are into fishing you really shouldn’t miss out on his book about codfish: Dorschangeln vom Boot und an den Küsten.

The Tournament Favorites
Are either Italy or Spain, depending on which betting site Google sends you to, with England a close third. Germany and Serbia are outside bets and everyone else is apparently not worth caring about.

The Group Stage
Germany have been drawn into group B together with Spain, England and Finland. They’ll face Spain tonight (20.45h CET), followed by Finland (18.06.09 18.10h CET) and England (22.06.09 20.45h CET). Should the experts be right, the team will then have finished third in the group and travel back home for some well deserved holidays while we are left contemplating who could be a serious candidate for Jogi Löw’s senior squad.

The Squad

G: Neuer (FC Schalke 04), Fromlowitz (Hannover 96), Sippel (1. FC Kaiserslautern)
D: Aogo, Boateng (Hamburger SV), Beck (1899 Hoffenheim), Boenisch (Werder Bremen), Höwedes (FC Schalke 04), Hummels, Schmelzer (Borussia Dortmund), Schwaab (SC Freiburg)
M: Adlung (VfL Wolfsburg), Ben-Hatira (MSV Duisburg), Castro (Bayer Leverkusen), Ebert (Hertha BSC), Grote (VfL Bochum), Johnson (1860 München), Khedira (VfB Stuttgart), Özil (Werder Bremen)
A: Dejagah (VfL Wolfsburg), Ede (MSV Duisburg), Marin (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Wagner (MSV Duisburg)

Hrubesch might have agreed to temporarily coach the U21s but he wasn’t willing to share any of his own boys with the team as he decided not to promote any of his U19 title winning U20 players. And since there is a U20 World Cup coming up later this year it’s probably understandable. But you could have constructed a pretty mean midfield and more importantly this squad could have really used a decent striker. The fact that Hrubesch nominated two midfielders (Dejagah, Marin) as strikers tells the whole story. This position will certainly be the team’s achilles heel and all the danger needs to come from the midfield. Players who are most likely to be World Cup 2010 candidates are (wild guess): Neuer, Beck, Höwedes, Khedira, Özil and Marin. The surprise omissions were Alexander Baumjohann (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Baris Özbek (Galatasaray Istanbul) and Eugen Polanski (Getafe) while Kevin Boateng (Borussia Dortmund) is out injured.

Hrubesch didn’t have all that much time to coach the team and get to know the players. It’ll be interesting to see how well they will do tactically and what kind of team spirit he was able to inject.