Translated material
Give youth
In the final of the tournament, which ended on Monday in Sweden, Germany defeated the England team - 4:0. The team of Horst Hrubesch - once the top scorer in the Bundesliga, and now the most qualified youth coach in Germany - conceded only one goal at the current European Championship. The German defense, led by perhaps the most talented young goalkeeper in Europe, Manuel Neuer, also held out against the British, led by Theo Walcott. Having opened the scoring in the middle of the first half, after the break the players of the German youth team forced the English goalkeeper to make a mistake with a long-range free kick, and at the end of the match they finished off the demoralized opponent.
“I must congratulate the German team, because winning any final is a great achievement, and with a score of 4:0 it is even more significant,” England head coach Stuart Pearce was left to note on the official UEFA website. His German colleague Horst Hrubesch, in turn, thanked the management: “We have many promising young players, for which we must thank the German Football Association, which has made large investments to improve the situation. There is excellent cooperation between the union, small regional federations, clubs and the Bundesliga. As a result, we have bright, young, talented football players for the future.”
Hrubesch knows what he is saying “thank you” for. The German Football Association really has a clearly structured program that turns German football into the strongest in the Old World. But at the same time, it is surely and not at all slowly becoming a sport for immigrants: among the winners of the European Youth Championship there are not many people from Germany.
In defense, in addition to Kemerovo native Andreas Beck, who theoretically could play for the Russian national team, Jerome Boateng plays, for example. His father, by the way a fairly strong sprinter, arrived in Berlin in 1981 from Ghana. However, the football genes of Jerome and his brother Kevin were most likely passed on from their mother, who once played in the German women's national team.
In addition to the “Russian” and the “Ghanaian”, Sebastian Benisch, who was born in the Polish city of Gliwice, plays in defense for the German youth team. Sometimes in defense they are accompanied by Hamburg player Denis Aogo, who is already tired of refusing to the leadership of the Nigerian national team. One of the most prominent figures in the center of the field for the German national team is Stuttgart graduate Sami Khedira - his father is from Tunisia. The technical Enis Ben-Khatira is also from North Africa.
The number ten of the German youth team, Mesut Ozil, who essentially played the entire game against the English, has Turkish roots. Until the last moment, the head coach of weedy Turkey, Fatih Terim, did not lose hope of seeing him on his team. Ozil hesitated for a long time, but still chose Bundesteam.
The author of the first goal against the England national team, Gonzalo Castro, also thought for a long time, choosing between the national teams of Spain, where his father and mother were born, and Germany, where they once moved to work. And Sandro Wagner, who scored a double in the final, was a Brazilian in the hopes of Bayern Munich for a long time. However, in attack, the German youth team is completely international - the Serbian Marko Marina, born in the city of Bosanka Gradiška, located on the territory of the state entity Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but who had already made his debut and scored in the national German team, the Iranian Ashkan Deyaga, who refused to fly with his German partners for a match in Israel, Nigerian Chinede Edu... But the once very radical stands of German stadiums are now quite calm about the presence of black players in the national and youth teams. They pay them in victories.
Football. European Youth Championship. Final . Germany - England - 4:0 (Castro 23, Ozil 48, Wagner 79, 84) .