The former German U21 national coach Stefan Kuntz has criticized the pace of reforms and changes in German football and considers the sporting failures to be a logical consequence.
“These results are a reflection of a development that many have foreseen for years. It’s a kind of blue letter for German football, a final warning,” said the 60-year-old of the German Press Agency. For the first time since 2013, the U21s failed in the preliminary round at the European Championship.
Kuntz trained the German youth selection from 2016 to 2021 and repeatedly pointed out undesirable developments in youth work during this time. “You don’t have to be a prophet. If you accompany it for six years, you can of course see the lack and the deficit,” said the Turkish national coach, who had led the U21s to the European Championship final three times in a row and to the title wins in 2017 and 2021.
Kuntz: “Decisions take too long”
The 1996 European champion sees the greatest obstacle to future success in the lack of speed in the implementation of reforms. “The biggest problem is that it takes time for something to change in German football. Every suggestion falls on deaf ears at first. Then there are doubts – why do we need these changes, why is the reform necessary at all?” said Kuntz. “And those concerns are raised by people who aren’t specialists in youth football or developing talent.”
In 2018, the German Football Association initiated fundamental reforms in talent training in Germany with the Future Project. The implementation has been dragging on since then, also because of the many different interests. Only on Thursday did the DFB executive committee decide on the long-planned reform of the youth competitions. “The future project was initiated many years ago and is now being implemented,” criticized Kuntz. “The decisions in Germany take far too long.”
