Reinventing the past: Youth and national team development in England and Germany

English and German football had, until recently, shared a number of notable characteristics at both domestic and international level. Th e similarities observable were, arguably, based largely on the increasingly penetrative commercialisation of the game that occurred in both countries, altering the core values of professional football at similar points in time. The intention of this chapter is to examine these similarities and to provide a comparative analysis of professional football in England and Germany by focusing specifically on aspects of foreign player involvement, youth and national team development. The chapter shows that whilst the English and German systems were affected by a range of similar market forces for much of the 1990s and 2000s, the responses to issues relating to domestic league development, foreign player involvement, youth and national team success have been very different in the last 10 years. Therefore, the chapter concludes by showing how, as the result of a number of structural changes, the German model is now held up as a model of best practice, whilst the future of English football, at international level at least, is less certain.