Where the system comes from
The European Championship of 2000 was a low point. Germany went out of the group stage with one point, with an ageing team and no visible successors. The response was structural.
From 2001 the DFB and DFL obliged every club in the first and second division to run a youth performance centre (Nachwuchsleistungszentrum, NLZ). The requirements were concrete: full-time coaches, cooperation with schools, sports-medical support, infrastructure. The model was in part built on the French system of the Centres de Formation. From 2007 the centres were certified and rated with stars.
Added to that was the DFB talent development programme with around 360 regional bases across the country, where children from the age of eleven were coached in addition to their club training. The idea: no talent should be overlooked, not even in a village.
The system worked. The world champions of 2014 were its product. The number of German professionals in the Bundesliga rose, and so did the quality. And it created a problem that only became visible later.
The criticism of the system
The debate that has been running since roughly 2018 has one core: the system produced players who are good at everything and outstanding at nothing.
The charges in detail:
Too early, too much structure. Children entered performance centres at eight or nine, trained four or five times a week under instruction, played in fixed systems with clear roles. The street football that lays the technical foundation in France, the Netherlands and South America was missing. The players learned what the coach wanted — not what they would have tried out themselves.
Too much tactics, too little technique. German youth coaches taught positional play, pressing and transitions early. That is the system's strength and its weakness: a twelve-year-old learning when to shift spends less time with the ball than one playing 3v3 in the yard.
Too little one-against-one. The comparison articles in this series show that Sporting, Ajax, Athletic and Lyon put dribbling at the centre. German centres did not do so for a long time. The result: a generation without wingers who beat opponents, and without strikers with instinct in the box.
Selection too early. Anyone not in a performance centre at twelve rarely gets in later. Late developers — physically, mentally — are lost. The relative age effect, the preference for children born early in the year, is well documented in German centres.
The transition is missing. Second teams of German professional clubs play in the Regionalliga, and many were abolished. Unlike in Portugal, the Netherlands or Spain there is no men's football at second-division level for 19-year-olds. The jump from the U19 to the Bundesliga is therefore bigger than elsewhere.
The DFB has responded to the criticism. The children's football reform, binding since the 2024/25 season, introduces small formats for the youngest age groups — 2v2 and 3v3 on several pitches, without tables, without fixed positions, with rotating teams. That is the Dutch and Spanish logic, twenty years later. Whether it improves the return will show in 2035 at the earliest.
Bayern Munich: the Campus
Bayern Munich has historically lived little off its youth. The exceptions are prominent — Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Müller, David Alaba, Holger Badstuber — but they remained exceptions in teams that were mainly bought. Toni Kroos arrived at 16 from Rostock, Jamal Musiala at 16 from Chelsea's youth.
In 2017 the club opened the FC Bayern Campus in the north of Munich, for around 70 million euros, with eight pitches, a boarding school and facilities for every age group. The declared goal: more home-grown players in the first team.
What has come out of it since: Aleksandar Pavlović and Josip Stanišić have established themselves in the first team. Musiala counts halfway. The rest of the Campus graduates play in the second division, in the Regionalliga or abroad.
The criticism of the Campus is loudest in Munich itself. Uli Hoeneß has said publicly on several occasions that the return does not match the investment. The board has changed the leadership several times, most recently with a restructuring from 2024.
The analysis is not hard: an academy can only be as good as its access to the first team. Bayern buys the best players in the world. A 19-year-old from the Campus competes with Kane, Musiala and Olise for minutes. At Benfica he competes with players the club bought for ten million. That is not a charge against the Campus but the consequence of the Bayern model. Manchester City has the same problem.
On top of that comes the missing transition: Bayern's second team were relegated from the third division to the Regionalliga in 2021. Since then Campus graduates play Regionalliga at 19 instead of men's football at professional level.
Borussia Dortmund: the development model
Dortmund made a virtue of necessity. The club was close to insolvency in 2005, could no longer buy and had to develop. Nuri Şahin made his debut in 2005 at 16 as the youngest Bundesliga player in history. Marcel Schmelzer, Kevin Großkreutz, Mario Götze and Marco Reus — who left the youth and came back via Ahlen and Gladbach — formed the core of the championship teams under Klopp.
What Dortmund has done differently from every other German club since around 2015: the model is built for 17-year-olds from abroad.
Christian Pulisic came at 16 from the USA. Jadon Sancho at 17 from Manchester City. Jude Bellingham at 17 from Birmingham City, for around 25 million, sold in 2023 for over 100 million to Real Madrid. Giovanni Reyna from New York, Jamie Bynoe-Gittens from City, Erling Haaland at 19 from Salzburg. Plus Youssoufa Moukoko, who came at eleven from St. Pauli's youth and became the youngest Bundesliga player at 16.
The logic: Dortmund cannot offer a 17-year-old the wages of City or Chelsea. But Dortmund can guarantee him what those clubs cannot — minutes in the Bundesliga and the Champions League at 18 or 19. That is the sales argument. The player develops, rises in value and leaves at 21 or 22 for four times the price.
Lars Ricken, himself a home-grown player and Champions League winner in 1997, ran the academy from 2008 to 2024 and has been sporting director since. The centre in Brackel is regarded as one of the most modern in Germany. The Footbonaut, a training machine that plays balls in from different directions and lights up target areas, was used in Dortmund in 2012 for the first time in professional football and has become the symbol of data-supported technical training. Its actual effect is disputed — coaches from the club have described it as a supplement, not a core.
Since 2021 Dortmund has had a second team in the third division again. That is a deliberate step against the missing transition and one of the reasons Dortmund produces more home-grown players than Bayern.
The limit of the model: it is a transfer model, not a development model in the narrow sense. The most spectacular Dortmund talents of the last ten years were developed elsewhere and refined in Dortmund. That is legitimate and economically successful — but it is something other than what Benfica or Ajax do.
The comparison with Europe
What this series of articles has shown about twelve clubs can be applied to Germany:
Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain have second teams in the second division. Germany does not. That is the biggest structural disadvantage of the German system and the least discussed.
France regulates development with standards. Germany does something similar with academy certification. The difference lies in the préformation: France protects technical development from 13 to 15 from result pressure. Germany does not.
Sporting, Ajax and Athletic put the one-against-one at the centre. German centres did not do that for a long time and are catching up now.
Barça and Ajax have a playing idea across every age group. Many German centres have playing philosophies on paper. Whether they are lived in the U12 depends on the coach.
Athletic and Lyon live off regional roots. German centres scout early and wide. The boy from the neighbouring village is signed at nine and commutes. That is efficient and has its price in attachment, family and enjoyment of the game.
Red Bull standardises the playing idea across sites. Leipzig is the only German club that does so consistently — and is criticised as an artificial product for it.
Application: what you can take from it
This section is our interpretation.
For German coaches the question is not what Bayern or Dortmund do. It is what the system overlooked and what an individual coach can correct.
More ball, less instruction
The criticism of the German system is at heart a criticism of too much coaching. Reduce your calls. Let a small-sided game run for ten minutes without intervening. Count how often you speak. Halve it.
Catch up on the one-against-one
If your club has focused on positional play and transitions in recent years, dribbling is probably missing. Ten minutes per session, every age group, with a goal and an opponent. Do not punish mistakes in dribbling. The Sporting lesson is the one Germany needs most.
Keep late developers deliberately
Check the birth months of your squad. If three quarters were born in the first half of the year, your club has a selection error. Keep players from the last quarter longer, give them minutes even if they lag physically. At 17 they are often the better footballers.
Do not just implement the children's football reform — understand it
The small formats are not a simplification but the opposite: they give children more decisions, more touches and more responsibility. Anyone who carries on coaching positions from the touchline undoes the reform. The right role in children's football is organising and staying quiet.
Build the transition to the seniors yourself
The system has no transition. Your club can have one: U19 players who train with the seniors from the second half of the season. A second senior team understood as a development team. One person responsible for the move. That is the Benfica lesson on an amateur scale.
Write the playing idea down — and check whether it is lived in the U12
A playing philosophy in the club folder is worthless. One the U12 coach knows, trains and demands in matches is the core of everything Barça and Ajax stand for. The test: ask a U12 player how his club wants to play. If he cannot say, there is no playing idea.
What to take away
- The German academy system arose in 2001 after the low point of Euro 2000, produced the 2014 world champions and has been criticised since around 2018: too early, too much structure, too little technique and one-against-one, selection too early, no transition to the seniors.
- The FC Bayern Campus delivers little because a home-grown player competes with world-class signings. That is the consequence of the Bayern model, not a failure of the academy.
- Dortmund has built a transfer model for 17-year-olds from abroad — economically successful, but something other than development in the sense of Benfica or Ajax.
- Germany's biggest structural disadvantage is the missing men's football for 19-year-olds. Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands have second teams in the second division.
- The children's football reform of 2024/25 adopts the Dutch and Spanish logic. Its effect will show in ten years at the earliest.
- Transferable: less coaching, more one-against-one, keeping late developers, building the transition yourself, living the playing idea down to the U12.
Coach OS was created in Germany, for coaches working inside this system. Whether a playing idea reaches the U12 is answered by the view across every team in the club dashboard. The playing idea itself comes from the club.
FAQ: frequently asked questions
Sources and further reading
- DFB and DFL: publications on academy certification, the talent development programme and the children's football reform.
- Raphael Honigstein: Das Reboot — on the emergence of the academy system and the road to the 2014 title.
- Christoph Biermann: Matchplan — on Dortmund, the Footbonaut and data-supported training.
- Interviews with Lars Ricken on Dortmund's youth strategy 2008–2024.
- Studies on the relative age effect in German youth football, among others from the German Sport University Cologne.
- Public contributions to the talent development debate, among others from Hannes Wolf, Uli Hoeneß and former DFB sporting directors.
A note on the evidence: the cost of the FC Bayern Campus is a media figure. The description of the criticism summarises an ongoing debate and is weighted accordingly, not conclusive. Transfer fees are base amounts according to media reports.