Part 2: A conversation with Ralf Rangnick

Part 2: A conversation with Ralf Rangnick

by | Apr 27, 2021 | Legends

Hardly anyone else knows more about talent

By Luca Wodtke

Despite his great successes, Ralf Rangnick has never forgotten his roots. The “professor”, as many call him, was born in the small southern German town of Backnang. A man who has led a club from the lower leagues of German football to the UEFA Champions League in a very short time knows how to deal with talent. Rangnick is one of the greatest sports visionaries of our time.

 

We spoke about…
... how the interaction between the club and parents works
“That brings us back to the training profession. But it’s not much different in other sports and professions: if a child has great talent, he or she must have started at the age of five. And at the age of eight or nine, they must practice for countless hours a day and then learn with the best possible teachers. In principle, it’s no different with footballers. Before 2000, football was “learned” on the street. But today, street football hardly exist anymore, and it will not come back, due to social and sporting developments. The professional club that trains and develops its players has now taken its place.

Back to the parents: If a boy wants to become a professional footballer and has talent, he is usually confronted with an offer from a professional club when he is 12. It always depends on where the talent lives with his family. If the offer for FC Bayern Munich then goes to a family in Kiel, for example, the whole family has to decide together how to deal with the offer. Should the 13-14-year-old boy move 600 km on his own or will the whole family move? Will the offer be accepted at all? Of course, the boy has to want it himself, but the parents will go along with him later. In this respect, there automatically has to be a good and close relationship between the club’s sporting management, the academies, and the parents.”

... what happens when parents decide against the will of the child
“When parents go against the will of their own child and send them to another part of Germany, you have to ask yourself whether they are fulfilling their function as “good parents”. Personally, I could never imagine doing something like that, sending my own child away.

In such a case, the departing club can only influence the parents. If the player already has an advisor at that age, then the club must also influence the advisor so that something like that doesn’t happen. I always advise the parents and advisors with whom I have to do that a child should stay as long as it is in good hands and allowed to play in the vicinity of home. That way, the child at least has a chance to balance school, education, social contacts, and domestic life, which is already difficult enough for talented youngsters.

If, however, the club that is poaching the talent feels that it cannot develop properly in its hometown, then it might make sense to let the child go. That’s what happened with Joshua Kimmich. The only reason we were able to bring him to Leipzig was that VfB Stuttgart didn’t give him that squad spot in the U23 team. In retrospect, that was a glaring error of judgment. But the boy made this decision himself, he wasn’t sent away by his parents.

Of course, the financial interest of the parents might influence them to ‘sell’ their own child. Unfortunately, this goes along with the increasing salaries in sport. For many, the big money in football is very tempting. Nevertheless, I can only advise every talented youngster to take a two-track approach right from the start: Sport and school. And it’s best to do that for as long as possible. In the past, players learned a profession, then played football for 20 years, and then that profession no longer existed.

Normal everyday life is not really possible for a football talent. A talent, no matter what kind, has to be nurtured and that’s not possible if the child goes to school normally and has a normal everyday life. If you want to challenge a talent properly, then everything else has to be planned around that talent. That’s why it’s so great that the football academies are so important in the Bundesliga. Football careers today start earlier and end earlier. At 30, you’re actually already old news. You cannot start looking for a profession at 30, with a completely different salary bracket. That takes some getting used to.

Of course, it’s not easy for a family to build everything around a child, especially since only very few of the talented ones actually make it at professional level. That’s why it’s important that the talents at the academies leave school with qualifications in case they do have to fall back on a normal profession. If it’s between semi-pro football in the 4th league or a real job, they’re better off concentrating on the latter.

Top talents will make it as professionals, but their journey but it can be delayed or accelerated by the influence of authority figures such as parents.”

... how to deal with a talent that does not make the jump
“It’s different everywhere. Usually, the academy director is in charge of that, and also the coaches. There are two types of challenges for a young talent each year. You have to well enough in school make the grade and well enough on the pitch be kept on by the club. Players are subjected to evaluation twice a year. Here we can come back to Kimmich: he was denied the wish to go up to the U23s when he was 18. But because he is such an incredibly driven person, that didn’t stop him. That’s why he’ll be captain of FC Bayern and of the German national team one day because he simply has this talent of personality. These players are usually also the ones who manage to graduate from school with good grades despite missing quite a lot from school. Even if he misses 30% of classes, he still graduates with a better grade than others who are not professional footballers. Because he has this strong will.

In the end, the people in charge of a club decide how to deal with a player who doesn’t make the cut. Then the advisors and the parents come into play again. Ideally they’re be in the same boat. They have often already planned for the worst case, for the intermediate case, and for the best case. This applies both to an early end to a professional career due to a lack of talent, or due to injury.

Every club needs a career planner and advisor who looks after the talents’ path on a full-time basis. Unfortunately, there are only a few clubs that already have such a person at their club. The clubs in England are way ahead of us in that respect. But at the end of the day, it’s the responsibility of the club management to offer support for their youth players. The 2% who make it to the professional level don’t have to deal with that, but the vast majority, 98%, need this support. Of course, parents and advisors have to be aware of what a big responsibility they have. But the club definitely has to step up as well.

Talent acquisition starts so early these days. They get to the Bundesliga early enough. If a 10-year-old child has the chance to be promoted in his club, getting coached by someone who does a good job, then he should stay at the home club.”

“Part 1: A conversation with Ralf Rangnick” can be found here on our blog!

Share this:
Part 1: A conversation with Ralf Rangnick

Part 1: A conversation with Ralf Rangnick

by | Apr 27, 2021 | Legends

There is hardly anyone else who knows more about talent

By Luca Wodtke

Despite his great successes, Ralf Rangnick has never forgotten his roots. The “professor”, as many call him, was born in the small southern German town of Backnang. A man who has led a club from the lower leagues of German football to the UEFA Champions League in a very short time knows how to deal with talent. Rangnick is one of the greatest sports visionaries of our time.

 
We spoke about…
...his coaching role models

“So I wouldn’t quite call them role models – I’d rather call them coaches who have accompanied and inspired me on my journey. As a coach, you have to find your own way. My coaching career started very early, actually at the age of 21, but then really at 25. I realised early on that the German football of the time was not what I had imagined and what I wanted to stand for as a coach.

That’s why, as a young coach, I had little choice but to look beyond Germany. In the 80s, there was Arrigo Sacchi with AC Milan, who already played a complete zonal marking system. That was something different from the man-marking that was typical of German football at the time. Sacchi was an important point of reference for me.

And then there was Valeri Lobanowski, the coach of Dynamo Kiev, who played against Viktoria Backnang in my hometown. Lobanowski showed what a difference it makes when a team really ‘presses’ on the pitch and how difficult that makes the game for the opponent. After that game, I watched a lot of Dynamo’s training sessions when they were at the training camp in Ruit.

In addition to these two coaches, who definitely influenced me, there is Helmut Groß, with whom I have a close friendship until this day. We worked together in Stuttgart, Hoffenheim, and at RB Leipzig.”

... the oft-quoted "street football"

“The coach lets the players determine the level at which the individual components are trained and “provoked” by the rules! It is necessary and helpful for the coach to know which screws he has to turn in order to optimally develop “his” playing philosophy. He should know exactly where he wants to go and rather not intervene at all than give the wrong “instructions”! In other words, he should trust the players and their desire to play and succeed. In the background, the players can be analysed. A coach can then record certain performance indicators and follow them up if he wants to observe and promote this development.

The key to the popularity of street football lies in the variations that are part of street football. The whole motto is “Repeat without repeating!”

Everything that challenges and encourages should then be brought out. This includes fun, playfulness, dynamics, passion, and the will to win. Tactics and strategy emerge along the way in the competition. The possibilities of street football can be monitored and accompanied by scientific means, up to and including AI. But it is better if the coach can trust his experience and a trained eye.

Unfortunately, such coaches who can do this are relatively rare and also only coachable with a lot of effort and patience, but every now and then there are exceptional talents who grasp things quickly and only need months for things others need years for.”

... his incredible eye for talent
“The question is how and on the basis of which factors you recognise a talent. This also includes a certain amount of experience and a trained eye. I would like to illustrate this with the example of Thomas Müller. When Müller was 16 or 17, only a few believed in his career path. But with someone like Helmut Groß or myself, who have followed the careers of young players for decades, you have a certain amount of experience to recognise whether a 16- or 17-year-old has what it takes to launch a great career later on. But you definitely need a trained eye for that. With Thomas Müller, who is not a really exceptional technically and doesn’t have fine motor skills, only certain coaches can see what strengths he brings to the table.

However, an assessment is always subjective. The scouts in the clubs have to recognise early on which positive characteristics of a talent have an effect on the team and what he can still become. First and foremost, this includes the player’s mentality. That is, as I like to say, the talent of the personality. There is always a chance for improvement here, see the example of Joshua Kimmich. Those responsible at VfB Stuttgart didn’t even want to give him a place in the squad in the second team when he was 18. That was the reason why there was even a chance for Leipzig to get Kimmich on loan for two years.”

... why talents are becoming younger and younger
“Of course there are opportunities to recognise players at 15 or 16. Mainly because players have an earlier start to their careers. It is now completely normal for a 17-year-old to play in the Bundesliga, if you think of Jude Bellingham or Giovanni Reyna at Borussia Dortmund alone. Nowadays, it’s no longer unusual for a 17-year-old to play at the top level. But you need coaches who recognise what a player can achieve and who have the courage to put a young player onto the pitch.”
... where this development comes from
“It has changed in the last 10-15 years. I remember when Mehmet Scholl was a player for Bayern Munich. He was still considered a talent at 25. You have to decide until when a player is still considered a talent. For me, a player is no longer a talent at 21. Today, a player is mature at 21. Timo Werner had already played more than 120 Bundesliga games by the time he was 21. In my opinion, a player is still a talent at 17, maybe until 19, but after that, you can no longer use the word talent. Because young players today are so well-trained by the academies that even a 17-year-old who is is fully grown physically can have all the prerequisites to be an accomplished player. If you look at Bellingham or Reyna on the pitch, you see fully professional players. These are athletes who meet all the requirements and only need coaches to develop them further and, above all, give them the chance to play regularly.

This development has already taken place in the last 10-15 years. Football has become a completely different sport. If you just look at the number of metres run, especially sprints, you can see that football has changed completely. That also means that the value of young players who have the physical prerequisites for the faster sport has been recognised. It’s no longer like it was 20 years ago, when people thought: “Oh well, he needs time now. He has to be introduced slowly. The older players have to teach him first how this works properly”. 20 years ago, a 19 or 20-year-old playing in the Bundesliga was a total exception.”

... which role the understanding of tactics plays today

“First of all, the coach needs to understand tactics. He has to decide how he wants to play. The players are fully versed in tactics as professional footballers because they have been developed at the academies. 20 years ago, nobody thought that being a professional footballer was a vacation that could be taught. That only changed thanks to the establishment of academies at the turn of the millennium.

Nowadays, no professional club can get a license without an academy that employs at least two full-time pro coaches. That’s why you can learn the profession of a professional footballer from a young age.

It is actually an absolute rarity today for a player to make a career in the Bundesliga if he hasn’t already played for one of the Bundesliga clubs at the age of 13. If you look at the 2016 German European Championship team, there was only one player who did not spend his youth in the academy of a professional club. That was Jonas Hector. This shows that the profession of professional footballers, including knowing “How do I feed myself? How do I live? What factors are important?”, has become an apprenticeship profession. That’s why a 17-year-old who has the right mentality and pays attention to everything he’s learned, is ready for Bundesliga football. Whether these young players get the chance, later on, depends on whether the coaches have the courage to let them play.

In Germany, many young players are allowed to play. It’s more difficult for young players is in Italy, where many ex-professionals are coaches. They see their youth players in the same way as they were trained back then, which is of course no longer realistic today. That’s why it’s unfortunately still rare in Italy for a 19 or 20-year-old to be a regular player. It’s mostly the smaller clubs that let the young players play. Of the top leagues in the world, Germany has the largest number of young players making their debuts and England is now catching up, especially with the foreign coaches now at the top clubs.

There is a very interesting story about this: of the eight teams in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Champions League, 180 of the 200 players were already playing exclusively men’s football at the age of 17 and were no longer in youth teams, although theoretically they would have been allowed to play for two more years in the U19s. This confirms what I said: The club must ensure that these exceptional talents can already play men’s football at the age of 17.”

“Part 2: A conversation with Ralf Rangnick” can be found here on our blog!

Share this:
José Mourinho: “Have you ever had time to study philosophers?”

José Mourinho: “Have you ever had time to study philosophers?”

by | Aug 26, 2021 | Legends, Oskar Beck EN

Are footballers more brilliant thinkers than Hegel and Sartre – or just hungry for a good omelette? Coaches like Jose Mourinho are raising the bar of high expectations.

Albert Einstein, the famous Swabian, was what the English call “the brightest bulb in the chandelier”. According to legend, the most failed man in the world went looking for an assistant one day and invited three applicants for an interview.

“What is your IQ?” he asked the first. “175,” the candidate revealed to him. “Splendid,” Einstein marvelled, “then we could philosophise together.”

“And what is your IQ?” he asked the next candidate. “120,” he replied, and the master was again deeply impressed: “Then we could go to the theatre together.”

“Do you also have an IQ?” he finally turned to the third and last. “75,” he said, to which Einstein replied, ” Doesn’t matter, then we could watch football together.”

Even if the story is not entirely true, it is at least very well invented. In any case, at some point the ghastly suspicion arose that footballers would be better off leaving the thinking to the philosophers. And indeed, for a while there was much to be said for this, because Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, said impressive things such as: “In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opponent”. But the presence of the philosophers soon turned out to be the far bigger problem, at the latest when Sartre, in the labyrinth of his brainstorms, also drifted into the realisation: “A good goalkeeper distinguishes himself first and foremost by exceeding his powers.” What he was trying to tell us with that?

No one knows.

That’s why footballers now prefer to philosophise for themselves. Spontaneously, one thinks above all of national coach Jogi Löw, who as the highest authority in the country once put his foot down in front of a camera: “The philosophy of offensive play, that is, to score goals, to play forward, remains unchanged.” The “Spiegel” was speechless with enthusiasm in its online edition and raved: “The first national coach philosopher.”

But others no longer think of hiding either. When Lionel Messi briefly appeared on the transfer market the other day as a personnel matter, board boss Kalle Rummenigge justified FC Bayern’s lack of interest in the Argentine thus: “A player of this magnitude is not part of our philosophy.” The practical philosopher who teaches wisdom by example is the true philosopher.

José Mourinho, who currently coaches Tottenham Hotspurs, is also one of them. When a journalist once asked him if he still considered himself the greatest coach in the world despite his growing lack of titles, the Portuguese hit back: “Have you ever had time to study philosophers, Hegel for example?” When the reporter replied no, Mourinho confronted him with his proud life’s work as a coach, calling as a witness the Swabian thinker second only to Einstein: “Hegel says: the truth is the total.”

Philosophy is the search for answers to all the fundamental questions of the world and football. So nowadays every demanding coach pontificates at least with the sentence: “We have to create superior numbers everywhere on the pitch, that’s my philosophy.” Without such philosophies, a game is no longer even kicked off, and the whole world hangs on the lips of the associated luminaries. Even goal scorers without a high school diploma sometimes wrinkle their furrowed thinking foreheads in intellectual forward momentum and hurl the grave realisation into the microphones: “We’ve implemented the coach’s philosophy perfectly.”

Inevitably, football philosophy has at some point become the icing on the cake of all philosophies; in its shadow, the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of culture could meekly pack up. Even in coach education, it is for good reason that not the old farts Confucius, Nietzsche or Kant are taught, but the modern philosophers, from Sepp Herberger (“The next game is always the hardest”) to Franz Beckenbauer (“We”see”) to the most profound of all philosophies: “A rolling ball never gathers moss” (TV presenter Reinhold Beckmann). At some point, this constant striving of the human mind to recognise the interconnections of being led the great Italian Giovanni Trapattoni to fully pronounce the ultimate truth:

Football is ding, dang, dong.

Finally, someone said it.

But that was probably too much of a good thing. It’s not good when the air in the ball starts talking, say the conventional philosophers, shaking their heads, and now they are slowly but surely fighting back against the kicking masterminds. The philosophy magazine “Hohe Luft”, which brings us back to Jogi Löw for a moment, has asked the rebellious question in the direction of the national coach: “How can you scratch your balls in front of TV cameras and then also sniff your own hand?”
The headline of the thought-provoking pamphlet was “The Philosophy of Ball Scratching.”

But José Mourinho, in particular, has been on the receiving end since he described in kitchen philosophy terms that developing a football talent is comparable to making a good omelette. “Everything depends on the quality of the eggs in the supermarket,” Mourinho said, “without first-class eggs, you have a problem.” To which a critical detractor promptly asked publicly, “Is Jose a philosophical genius – or just hungry for an omelette?”

In any case, the philosophers are fed up. They are now reminding the footballers of the tried-and-tested wall slogan: “Man should leave the thinking to the horses, they have bigger heads.

Share this:
On the inside: Bundesliga youth academies

On the inside: Bundesliga youth academies

by | Nov 2, 2020 | Bundesliga, Talent

What does a Bundesliga football academy look like today, in 2020? A peek into the VfB Stuttgart academy.

By Luca Wodtke

Young talent is our future. German football only realised this after a very disappointing performance in the 2000 European Football Championship. By 2002, €500 Million were invested in reconstructing the Bundesliga’s youth development system. The strict change of rules forces all 36 licensed first and second league teams to run youth academies. If the club fails to operate a youth academy it will lose its licence, making it unable to play in the top Bundesliga divisions. Today, in addition to the 36 first and second league clubs, ten clubs in the third division and nine clubs in the regional leagues run a recognised youth academy. Besides training the boys athletically, the academies act as a home away from home, which is especially beneficial to the youngest talents.

Stuttgart, the city where Mercedes-Benz and Porsche originate, is located in southern Germany in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. The city’s biggest football club is VfB Stuttgart, playing in the second division of the Bundesliga this season. VfB Stuttgart represents sustainable successful youth work. Currently, more than 100 players, who have been trained for more than three years in the club’s youth teams, are active in Europe’s top professional leagues. Players such as Sami Khedira, Mario Gomez, Antonio Rüdiger, Joshua Kimmich, Timo Werner, and Serge Gnabry are some elite world-class players from the region and players who compete in the major European competitions. Even Arsenal first-team goalkeeper Bernd Leno came from Stuttgart’s academy.

Today, the ‘Nachwuchsleistungzentrum’ (youth academy) is run by Rainer Mutschler, a man who has been involved with a wide variety sports for many years. In 1988, he was the head coach of the German Ski Association. From 2000 to 2017, Mutschler worked as the managing director of VfB Marketing GmbH and sat on the club’s extended board. He worked at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium for 17 successful years and helped the club to achieve high marketing success. After his time in football, Mutschler moved on to the German Ice Hockey League, where he was head of marketing and sponsoring at the second division club Towerstars Ravensburg. He returned to Stuttgart in 2019 at the request of the club’s advisory board, which wanted Mutschler to become a member of the executive committee. But things turned out differently: the 60-year-old became head of the VfB’s youth performance centre at the request of former German national team player Thomas Hitzelsperger.

The so-called Extended Talent Promotional Programme that makes all professional football clubs in Germany run a recognised youth academy also introduced another new rule in 2002: all academies of the 36 first and second division teams must ensure that at any time at least 12 boys in their squad are eligible to play for the German national team. The scheme is kept in place with €80 Million invested annually and has ensured that approximately two-thirds of all Bundesliga youth players would be able to play for the German national team.

In accordance with this rule, Mutschler says that “as a youth talent academy, [VfB] essentially concentrate on domestic talent, and in younger age groups on ‘only’ local and regional talent”. The younger age groups he is referring to are the under 11’s to under 16’s. The club believes these young players should not be centralised at such a young age. This means removing them from their families and asking them to move across the country. “Another reason we only concentrate on regional talent in the youth teams is that we are convinced that we have enough talent from the metropolitan region of Stuttgart/Middle Neckar. We only consider international talents in the performance and transition area [U17-U21],” Mutschler says. The step to scout for international talents is taken if not enough exceptional players have been raised in VfB’s own younger age groups. This, however, rarely occurs.

The main language of the schools the boys attend is German. Seeing as the majority of VfB talents at the youth academy are domestic talents, translating is not a problem for Rainer Mutschler and his team. “German is our youth academy language. Translators are not necessary for the junior sector; this is only practised in the first phase in the professional sector for new foreign engagements who don’t have any knowledge of German. English is always an option as well, but we prefer keeping everything in German”.

There are so many young boys who want to make it to the professional level. In a youth academy, it is the staff’s job to find the all-around player that will benefit the team in all aspects. “We want to achieve this through intelligent scouting, which not only looks at and tests sporting but also personal characteristics and abilities,” Mutschler shares. For the very young talents, under the age of 14, scouting is done in person. For the older talents that have travelled between football teams already, technology that will show a player’s statistics can be used to help find the players that will be the biggest asset to a team. “Football players will be role models. The perfect player today has to be able to represent the team well. This means that when we scout, we look at all aspects of a player. This includes family and environment-viewings and detailed personal discussions with players and parents”.

In January 2007, the VfB Youth Boarding School opened its doors. Today, 22 of the 150 school-age talents live in these rooms, very close to the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Arena. Oliver Otto runs the boarding school with three social education workers, a cook, a housekeeper and eight teachers. This provides the talents with an environment tailored to their development as athletes, students and human beings. There was an expansion of school cooperation in recent years which led to VfB renting additional accommodation near the stadium. For some players, however, family security is particularly important. Host families, therefore, represent another important form of accommodation. VfB works together with various families who live very close to club grounds and integrate players into their everyday family life. “Talents who ‘live’ with us, whether it may be in the full or part-time boarding school, are fully supported by us. This includes school, personal, and sports education training and development. For this purpose, we employ a variety of educators: social educators, team and boarding school supervisors. In addition, all coaches have a basic educator training,” Mutschler says.

The youth promotion scheme introduced in 2002 also made sure that a sufficient number of qualified staff was employed by every club. It also stated that every one of the 36 first and second division clubs has to work with local schools to ensure that the young players were receiving full support in all life aspects. “Within the framework of personality development, various social and socio-political events are visited and topics are dealt with in order to broaden the young people’s horizons and allow them to gain experience outside of competitive sports in ‘real-life’,” Mutschler says, referring to the initiatives that staff at VfB Stuttgart take to teach the young talents more than just football.

In order to ensure that all youth players receive the best possible care, VfB Stuttgart set up the VfB part-time boarding school in summer 2009. The youngsters spend the afternoon at the VfB Club Centre to do their homework and prepare for any assignments and exams. The players can also relax, listen to music, eat and drink or sleep in a specially designed relaxation room. In the 2017/2018 school year, VfB has also launched the VfB Campus together with a local school, where youth players are now taught three times a week by highly qualified teachers in the rooms provided by the football club. “Only 1.5% of all talented youngsters make it to the professional level in the Bundesliga,” Mutschler says. “This makes it all the more important for us to provide all our young people with a sound school education and to give them further training to prepare them for their future careers”.

Around 70 VfB youth players attend one of the three DFB-awarded elite schools of football in the Stuttgart area, as well as the VfB partner school, where they receive an education tailored to their training requirements. In addition, up to seven teachers are available in the part-time boarding school every working day to provide intensive support for the students. “Sports and school requirements are ideally harmonized,” Mutschler says. “In this way, we achieve 98% school-leaving qualifications with our young people, of which more than 75% have a technical college or university entrance qualification”. In 2019, VfB took their commitment to quality education for their football talents one step further and introduced the VfB Stuttgart Akademie, a university education scheme. This presents the talents with a world after school and alongside, or without, professional football. After all, it is not a given that football talents will enjoy quality university education after spending so many hours on the pitch as students.

The club attaches as much importance to the school education as to the athletic and personal development of its players. On weekends without games, young talents are allowed to go home to their families. After all, a feeling of family security and optimum support in all life aspects are the two most important building blocks of success. “The young people from our boarding school go home regularly, which is also supported financially by us. In addition, parents come regularly to training and games. Furthermore, the young people have school holidays and breaks which are adjusted to the training and games,” Mutschler says.

The move from youth to the professional team is not easy. It is a real step up, and only very few talents make it to the Bundesliga team. “In the so-called transition area [the transition between the youth academy and the professional team, usually around U19 – U21] our best young people regularly take part in training measures of the professional team. In addition, individual training measures are carried out,” Mutschler explains. On top of getting the young players to the athletic level, they also have to learn to let go of the familiar and safe environment of the youth academy. Once the professional team is reached, the talents are role models and constantly in the spotlight, and any miss-step in their lives will be analysed. To ensure that the talents do not crack under this immense new pressure, VfB ensures that psychologists and therapists are always available to the players. The players are supported by the VfB youth academy until they take that step to a professional Bundesliga team, and even then, they always have a great net of professionals to fall back on.

If you take a look at this youth academy, you can only have an inkling of how many years it took and, above all, how much money had to flow to get this level of professionalism and passion into the youth academies of the Bundesliga. It is important to recognize that over the last 18 years there have been very few issues with the clubs breaking the rules: they all stick together and want to give their young talents the very best opportunities, with or without professional football. With motivated heads like Rainer Mutschler, this programme can continue to produce great talents for many years to come who understand more than just football. The world’s major football leagues can take a leaf out of the German book and invest in their own youth academies. Money invested wisely is not wasted, and what is a more sensible investment than our youth, the future.

Share this:
VfB Stuttgart Akademie presents itself

VfB Stuttgart Akademie presents itself

by | Oct 30, 2020 | Bundesliga, Education

Between red and white flags, surrounded by football fields: this is where you will find the ideal place to go to university.
VfB Stuttgart Akademie presents itself in a pitch.

By Luca Wodtke

The idea for an own VfB Akademie was born

VfB Stuttgart Akademie was initially created with a view to the club itself. The basic idea was to create opportunities for young athletes as well as licensed players of VfB Stuttgart to develop a second professional foothold during their sporting careers. Especially against the background that only about 2-3 percent of junior players make the leap into a professional career in football, this offer receives its particular relevance. If junior footballers decide to take part in an in-service training program in addition to their vocational training at VfB Stuttgart, they often lacked suitable offers in the past. Existing free-market offerings often do not provide the flexibility of time and place that professional athletes need to reconcile work and education – this is true of football and many other sports. That’s why the association has developed its own profile of requirements and started looking for suitable partners.

Partners – who they are, how they came, and why they matter

The result is a network for education that offers many opportunities not only to athletes but to all those who are interested in the VfB Stuttgart Akademie’s offer, paying particular attention to the needs of professionals. This convinced Allianz AG, which not only financially supports the Academy but also provides direct support with its know-how in the field of training and further education. The globally active insurer offer’s Academy participants, among other things, several-week internships that are flexible in terms of time, in order to give them an initial insight into the daily work routine at Allianz.

Along with Allianz AG, we are also proud to count the Kolping-Bildungswerk Württemberg e. V. and the Stuttgart Johann Friedrich von Cotta School to our partners. Both are educational institutions with which VfB Stuttgart has already successfully cooperated with junior high school graduates and gained important experience for the Academy.

In addition to Allianz AG as a sponsor of the Academy, Daimler AG, the IHK Region Stuttgart and the Stuttgart Chamber of Crafts and Trades are also involved under the umbrella of the VfB Stuttgart Akademie. All together – educational institutions and companies – pursue the goal of training highly motivated specialists for the local economy.

How to enroll

Each course has a link to the direct registration with the cooperating universities. Each educational partner has its own criteria for enrolling students, which are discussed in the direct exchange between the interested student and the university. The student becomes a participant in the VfB Stuttgart Akademie after successfully registering for a degree program and can thus benefit from the numerous advantages.

Press day at VfB Stuttgart Akademie

Our innovative programmes

With the SRH Fernhochschule – the mobile university, the BW Business School, and the University of Applied Sciences Nürtingen-Geislingen (HfWU), three experienced universities guarantee a first-class range of part-time and full-time study courses. The selection of study programs is a deliberately selected mix of general courses of study such as business administration or psychology, study courses related to sports such as sports management or health economics as well as topics of the future, which can be found, for example, in the study program “Digital Transformation Management” at BW Business School. This is to ensure that both students who aspire to a profession related to sports, as well as competitive athletes who are looking for a second professional career beyond the sport, find in the Academy offers. With their portfolio of certificate courses, the VfB Stuttgart Akademie, together with the universities, creates the opportunity to acquire ECTS credits piece by piece, which can later be credited towards a corresponding degree program.

A special highlight is the degree program “MBA Leadership and Sports Management”, in short, “VfB Master”, which is offered by the HfWU Nürtingen-Geislingen and can only be studied in cooperation with the VfB Stuttgart Akademie. Experts from VfB Stuttgart are also involved in the preparation of the contents and implementation of the degree program as well as in the framework program of the Academy. With its exclusive supporting program, which is open to all those who use one of the educational offers, the VfB Stuttgart Akademie creates real added value. Academy participants can thus benefit from the extensive VfB network and at the same time get into contact and exchange with other Academy participants.

Not an athlete? No problem!

It goes without saying that the VfB Stuttgart Akademie’s comprehensive education program is open to all groups of people. We would like to support job seekers who want to continue their education alongside their work or companies that are looking for suitable training opportunities for their employees, with targeted offers.

Study and work – possible at the VfB Stuttgart Akademie

Due to the flexible design of the courses in part or full time, the study program is especially suitable for students who want to work alongside their studies.

 

More information and how to sign-up can be found on our website
Share this: