German football union

The German Football Union was founded on January 28, 1900 in Leipzig . In 1940, due to World War II, he was expelled from FIFA . The re-founding of the German Football Union took place in Stuttgart on July 10, 1949 .

DFB currently has a little less than 26,000 clubs and over 6,700,000 members. According to statistics, it is the largest and richest football union in the world ^[1] . DFB is a registered nonprofit organization based in Frankfurt . The union is divided into 5 regional federations, which include 21 regional associations. The DFB also has a million women and 8,600 female adult and junior teams.

A large-scale program for the development of youth football began to be developed in Germany since 2000 , and it began to work in full in 2002 ^[2] . The head of this program is Ulf Shot. The need for significant changes in the football system became apparent after the German national team and German clubs began to give up their leading positions. Germany for the last time became the European football champion in 1996 , the world champion even earlier - in 1990 . At the European Championships from winning 1996 and until 2012 , Germany did not even make it to the semi-finals, at the 1994 World Championships in the USA the Germans sensationally lost in the quarter-finals of Bulgaria , in 1998 in France they lost again in the quarter-finals, this time Croatia . In 2002, Germany played in the final, where she lost to the Brazilian national team, in 2006 and 2010 Germany had third places.

Before the adoption of the “Talent Support Program” ( German: Talentförderprogramm ), talented youth in Germany was sought either by the clubs themselves or by the regional federations, who approached this in completely different ways, since their vision of football, traditions, financial capabilities, and organizational skills differed. Under the new program, schools were supposed to be evenly distributed throughout Germany . By 2003, 387 training fields were ready in the country, and the pupils were distributed so that their house was located no further than 25 kilometers from the training site. Financial dependence on clubs was also put to an end. Each institution was sponsored by a sportswear brand and an automobile concern.

Every year, our sponsors allocate from eight to ten million euros for the program. The money goes to salaries for coaches, scouts, for updating lawns, for some other necessary things in regional centers, for example, balls, programs that allow analyzing the actions and progress of football players, scientific literature, and so on.

- says the head of the program Ulf Shot ^[3]

In each training center, not only classes with young football players are held, but also seminars for regional coaches ( German. Info-Abend ) ^[4] . About 70 specialists work with children and youth teams, among which there are experts on a variety of issues: social pedagogy, proper nutrition, personal growth. There are people here who teach children how to communicate with the press, talk about what to say, and what kind of expressions it is better to refuse and never use them, they teach adequate behavior in social networks. Lectures are regularly held on the dangers of tobacco , alcohol and drugs . Young footballers are told how much and what time they should sleep. The task is to accustom teenagers to the lifestyle of a professional athlete .

Key Reform Points

1. Non-professional clubs, and in total DFB includes more than 27 thousand amateur clubs throughout Germany, receive from the German Football Union all kinds of support in attracting children to football and working with young football players.

2. Not a single young talent in Germany, whether it be a boy or a girl, should go unnoticed. To do this, a network of support centers for young football players ( German Stützpunkte ), involved in football in amateur clubs, is being created across the country.

3. Each professional football club in Germany, in order to obtain a license to speak in the first and second Bundesliga, must have a club youth training center ( German: Nachwuchsleistungszentrum , literally, the “Youth Work Center”, sometimes interpreted as the “Youth Training Center for Sports” Higher Achievements ”), which meets the requirements of the German Football Union.

4. Young football players involved in club training centers should play football without prejudice to study, receive education, and after graduation, a profession, for which, with the support of the German Football Union, the cooperation of clubs with schools ( German Eliteschulen ) and training centers is being strengthened ( institutions where you can learn a profession).

5. The system of competitions in youth and youth, junior and youth football is being reformed. A Junior Bundesliga is being created for players no older than 19 years old ( German: A-Junioren-Bundesliga ).

6. German national teams of younger ages become the most important center of competencies and the top of the pyramid of youth football. All teams train and play according to the same fundamental principles.

How the training system works

A huge contribution to the implementation of the youth training program was made by the outstanding football player Matthias Zammer , who worked for more than six years as the sports director of the football union. The main type of work of Zammer was just the development of youth football, the supervision of the training program and the German national teams of younger ages. The most important role in the functioning of such centers is played by the land football federations ( German: Landesverband ). Each federation has an employee who is responsible for the operation of the local network of support centers for young soccer players. In addition to the coordinators, there are scouts in local federations who regularly watch matches of amateur teams and look for talents. However, the coordinators themselves, as well as the trainers of the centers, are often scouts. The constant search for talent is an essential part of the German system.

At the beginning of the century, the German Football Union imposed a strict condition on clubs, according to which a professional license for playing in the first and second Bundesliga can be obtained only by having your own youth training center ^[5] . For clubs to obtain a professional license, their centers must meet certain requirements of the DFB, and more recently, the German Football League (DFL), which actually organizes competitions in the first and second Bundesliga . In addition to the club licensing system itself, in Germany there is a certification system for youth training centers ^[6] . Depending on the level and compliance with the DFL requirements, the centers are assigned a “star” status - from one to three stars.

According to the DFL report for the 2014/15 season , for the corresponding fiscal year, 36 clubs of the first and second Bundesliga spent 132.2 million euros on the maintenance of their youth training centers. In total, over 13 seasons (2002/03 - 2014/15), German professional clubs of the first and second Bundesliga (36 different teams each season) spent a little less than 1.1 billion euros on their training centers.

In German clubs, there are two main mechanisms that allow non-resident talents to combine football and study.

First, clubs have their own boarding schools where children live and study, as a rule, in one of the comprehensive schools, where their study schedule is combined with the possibility of two-time training.

The second - the clubs put their young football players in any schools that have, in addition to the educational complex, also living quarters.

The most important factor is the ability to learn and combine serious football activities. In order to organize this process in the best way, DFB together with clubs developed a program of the so-called “elite football schools” ( German: Eliteschulen des Fußballs ) ^[7] . These are the educational institutions with which the football union and clubs conclude an agreement, and young football players studying in youth training centers of professional clubs study in these schools . As a rule, these are guys from 15 years old and older. The study schedule in such schools is combined with the training schedule. As a rule, young athletes study in the morning, then they have training, which implies that the school has its own stadium, then classes again, and in the evening the second training is already at the training center at the club. In addition, young soccer players have the flexibility to take exams and quizzes. The most important aspect of cooperation between DFB and clubs with “elite schools” is that 2-3 outreach teachers, as a rule, one person each for the humanities, exact and natural sciences, must attend all away tournaments with clubs or national teams no older than 19 years old. Pupils of clubs who finish school at the age of 16-17 often have the opportunity to get a profession either at professional colleges or at enterprises with which many clubs have signed cooperation agreements.

The system of youth training in German football is divided into certain stages. Depending on the age of young football players, each stage of preparation is indicated by a certain letter. The upper age bracket is 19 years old. Accordingly, children aged 18-19, or as U-19 designate them, are the so-called A-juniors, 16-17 years old, U-17 - B-juniors, 15 years old - C-juniors, and so on. Since 2007, there is a junior junior Bundesliga for players under 17 years old ( German: B-Jugend-Bundesliga, U-17 ), the competitions of which are held in the same format as for players no older than 19 years.

Guided by the principle “no talent should go unnoticed,” the headquarters of the German Football Union carefully collects and analyzes all kinds of data about each of the young players who have ever been called up to the national team of any age, even if it’s for a viewing gathering - from sports indicators and medical tests, to character traits and other tiniest nuances. At the headquarters of each German team there are breeders-trainers who constantly travel around Germany , looking for youth.

Successful implementation of the program would not have been possible without a critical component - in Germany, the training system for trainers was substantially reformed. It is the trainer who is the key figure in the entire German system, and the training and retraining of children's trainers has become the foundation on which all other elements of the system are based. The Hennes Weisweiler Coach School has become an internationally recognized center for training not only professionals for professional adult football, but also for children and youth. In January 2016, on the outskirts of Frankfurt , on the site of the former hippodrome , the construction of the so-called “DFB Academy” ( German DFB-Akademie ) began ^[8] . The cost of construction is about 90 million euros.

The German Football Union consists of 25,805 clubs, which unite 171,877 teams and 6,350,000 people. The union is also associated with the Football Licensing League. It is interesting to note that the Buzingen football club, based in the exclusives of Buusingen am Upper Rhine, is the only German football club not affiliated with the DFB, but playing in the Swiss Championship and Cup .

Regional Federations and Their Units

• North German Football Union (NFV)

  Schleswig-Holstein Football Union (SHFV)

  Hamburg Football Union (HFV)

  Bremen Football Union (BFV)

  Lower Saxon Football Union (NFV)

• West German Football and Athletics Union (WFLV)

  Lower Rhine Football Union (FVN)

  Middle Rhine Football Union (FVM)

  Westphalian Football and Athletics Union (FLVW)

• Southwest Regional Football Union (FRVS)

  Rhineland Football Union (FVR)

  Saara Football Union (SFV)

  South West Germany Football Union (SWFV)

• South German Football Union (SFV)

  Hessian Football Union (HFV)

  Baden Football Union (BFV)

  South Baden Football Union (SBFV)

  Wurttemberg Football Union (WFV)

  Bavarian Football Union (BFV)

• Northeast Germany Football Union (NOFV)

  Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Land Soccer Union (LFV)

  Saxony-Anhalt Football Union (FSA)

  Berlin Football Union (BFV)

  Brandenburg Land Soccer Union (FLB)

  Thuringian Football Union (TFV)

  Saxon Football Union (SFV)

• Ferdinand Huppe (1900-1904)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Noge (1904-1905)
• Gottfried Hinze (1905-1925)
• Felix Linnemann (1925-1945)
• Peko (Peter Joseph) Bauwens (1949-1962)
• Hermann Gössmann (1962-1975)
• Hermann Neuberger (1975-1992)
• Aegidius Brown (1992-2001)
• Gerhard Meyer-Forfelder (2001-2006) *
• Theo Zwanziger (2004-2012) *
• Wolfgang Niersbach (2012—2016)
• Reinhard Grindel (since 2016) ^[9]

* - In 2004-2006, dual power remained - Mayer-Forfelder was president, Zwanziger executive president.

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• German football (Rus)