What went wrong at the 2022 World Cup? What needs to change now? In the kicker interview, Max Eberl takes a clear position and criticizes the DFB.
“We need players like Enzo Fernandez or Rodrigo de Paul”: Max Eberl.
IMAGO/motif
Max Eberl is not part of the new DFB task force. “Because I’m too far away,” says RB Leipzig’s new sporting director in a big kicker interview (Monday edition). However, the working group around Matthias Sammer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge does not see Eberl as a “savior” anyway. Although she is “top-class, can support and initiate certain things, but does not automatically bring us the EM title in 2024”.
Eberl is also concerned with the question of what is needed in German football to get back on track after three weak World Cups and European Championships. “I think we have outstanding football players in Germany, but we also know that we will lose very important players like Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Ilkay Gündogan. We need players like Enzo Fernandez or Rodrigo de Paul with the Argentines. Good footballers who act with total dedication and the ability to work as part of a team. We’ve lost a bit of that greed to win every single duel.”
“We will only see in the next 10 to 15 years what we have missed”
The problem: “We take the boys the chance to develop too quickly because they may not be that good technically or tactically, but they play an outstanding role as a figure on the pitch or in the dressing room. We should have this heart for the cause move more into focus again. We have recently developed the German virtues such as robustness and assertiveness a bit.”
There are good approaches for meaningful changes, but these must be implemented quickly. “Time is clearly against us, because we will only see in the next 10 to 15 years what we have missed,” warns Eberl. “We have to get more boys into football again. And one question would be: Does it make sense to have youth academies up to U8 or should we leave the boys in their clubs and start with the NLZ later?”
Eberl on the sidelines at the World Cup, Oliver Bierhoff and Hansi Flick – and of course the situation at RB Leipzig: You can find the big interview in the current issue of kicker (here also as an eMagazine).
