Football: Völler on Sammer criticism: “He’s right about many things”

DFB sports director Rudi Völler can largely understand the drastic statements made by ex-national player Matthias Sammer about the state of German football. “I’m in contact with Matthias, he’s often very direct with his statements, sometimes he deliberately exaggerates. But: he’s right about many things, too!” Said the 1990 world champion in an interview with the editorial network Germany RND.

Sammer currently sees the “biggest crisis that German football has experienced in the recent past”. You have to admit it, the 1996 European champion told the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “We’re on the floor.” German football is only “world champion in finding excuses” and has “completely lost its identity”. Like Völler, Sammer is a member of the task force set up by the DFB after the World Cup debacle.

“His criticism was not about the senior national team in isolation, but about football in general and the sport as a whole,” said Völler. He himself is an athletics fan and was “shocked” that the German track and field athletes hadn’t won a single medal at the recent World Championships in Budapest.

Flick sees problems in the funding system

But the problem is also a social one. It is a “fact” that children and young people are less active these days, said the ex-striker: “When we came to training earlier, we were already broken before it started because we were on the soccer field for four hours. Today Many sit in front of the Xbox or the Playstation instead.”

For national coach Hansi Flick, the problems in German competitive sport are also due to the funding system. “If you listen to the athletes, it also has something to do with what we promote in Germany and what not,” said Flick: “In my time it was still like this: music club or sports club – there was nothing else. We we have to promote sport more in Germany, not just football.”