So that's the how, but what about the why? In large part it comes down to German football's revamp after the country's disappointing campaign at UEFA Euro 2000, where they finished bottom of Group A with just one point from three games.Įver since then, professional clubs across the country must run and maintain youth academies, which have to meet strict criteria every year in order for the club to be granted its license to compete the following season. Alexander Scheuber/Bundesliga/Bundesliga Collection via Getty Images Only in Ligue 1 were U20s given more game time (46,014/31 players), but it is worth noting that there were 380 games that season in France's 20-team top flight, 74 more than in the Bundesliga.Įrling Haaland (c.) began life in the Bundesliga with a hat-trick and never looked back. No wonder the likes of Sancho, Musiala and Bellingham decided to leave England to try their luck in Germany.
That was considerably more than in Serie A (21,761 minutes/14 players), La Liga (20,688 minutes/14 players) or the Premier League (19,081 minutes/12 players). In 2018/19, players aged 20 or below racked up 33,741 minutes in the Bundesliga, with 24 of them appearing regularly (in 10 games or more). Those opportunities are backed up by the numbers. My reasons for joining Dortmund? As I've said many times, I think the game time, what they offer young players in terms of opportunity on the pitch." I felt very comfortable coming into the Bundesliga. "I've been in a professional environment since I was 15, always with the first team," Bellingham explained shortly after his 2020 move from Birmingham City. Watch: All of Musiala's Bundesliga goals and assists in 2022/23 "Just being around them was an amazing experience for me, and I tried to pick up as many things as I could." "You're in and around the first team and you see all these top players training and I was just trying to learn and watch what they did," Musiala told earlier this season. It is not a scattergun approach of throwing handfuls in at a time and hoping one of them survives, but by gradually improving them to the right level. So how do the Germans do it? Simply put, by trusting their youngsters to perform. The Bundesliga has been polishing up rough diamonds for years, from homegrown talents such as Julian Brandt, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz to imported starlets like Christian Pulisic, Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland. Bellingham and Musiala are just two of the baby-faced wonders currently lighting up German football, with a host of players aged 22 or younger making a name for themselves: Youssoufa Moukoko, Mathys Tel, Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Florian Wirtz, Gio Reyna, Josko Gvardiol, Karim Adeyemi, Dominik Szoboszlai, Jeremie Frimpong… the list goes on and on.Īnd this is by no means a new phenomenon.
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