Germany And Its Two-Club National Team

By ALFRED DRAXLER, SPORTS EDITOR OF GERMANY'S BILD NEWSPAPER

hen German coach Berti Vogts chose his 22-man squad for France it seemed as if he had not bothered to keep track of who won and who lost in Germany's league, the Bundesliga. His team selection largely ignored players from the clubs with the best records, relying instead on men from mostly unsuccessful teams.

For example, the newly crowned Bundesliga champions, Kaiserslautern, will be contributing only one player, striker Olaf Marschall. On the other hand, two middling teams of the 18 in Germany's first division, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich, contributed 11 players--half the total--to the national squad. Six are from Bayern Munich, which lost both of its matches against Kaiserslautern. Borussia Dortmund, who slumped to mid-table mediocrity this season despite winning the European Champions League last year, has five. Fans and pundits alike are grumbling: Is Germany sending its best players to France?

Vogts is unmoved. "In Germany every fan has his own opinion. There are millions of team coaches. I can't please everybody." In fact, Vogts is following something of a German tradition. The country's national teams have a long record of success in using so-called "block formations" of players. Coaches have tended to use several players from the same team; taking advantage of the on-pitch communication that comes between players who regularly play together. Germany's 1954 World Cup victory was delivered by a team that included five players from Kaiserslautern--which finished runners-up to league champions Hanover 96 that year. In the "Golden Seventies," when Germany won the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup in 1974, team coach Helmut Schon used contingents from Bayern Munich and Borussia Monchengladbach, who finished first and second place respectively the previous season. One exception to the rule was national team coach Franz Beckenbauer, "the Kaiser," who won the 1990 World Cup with players from six different clubs in his team.

This year, despite club standings, Vogts has clearly chosen experience over potential. Kaiserslautern currently has no players of international caliber under contract, but the Munich and Dortmund teams are stuffed with players who have already proved themselves on an international stage. Jurgen Kohler with more than 100 caps for international appearances, Stefan Reuter and Andreas Moller with over 60, who play for Dortmund, and at Munich, Thomas Helmer with 65 caps add to the tried and tested formula of the German team.

Tried and tested they may be, but it takes time to achieve international status. Germany is traveling to France with a team that averages 29 years, remarkably old for a World Cup contender, even considering that the recall of 37-year-old warhorse Lothar Matthaus did much to boost the average. But who, interestingly, does Matthaus play for when he's at home? Bayern Munich.