Just How German are Germany’s Strikers?

I find the players who do it the other way around worse. Example: Petric and Rakitic are two Swiss-Croatian double-citizens. Both were born and raised in Switzerland. Both played football in Switzerland up until shortly. Both played for the Swiss U21 and U17 national teams. And then….they decided that they felt more Croatian than Swiss and are now playing for Croatia. The Croatian FA owes the Swiss FA a lot of money for all the investments. And I believe Rakitic and Petric owe Switzerland much more than money.

Posted from  Australia

Somehow when I heard the podcast, I had a feeling your brain would not turn this one loose till you’d done something creative with it.

Posted from  United States

I think that UEFA and FIFA should make rules like in Ice Hockey. Once a player played for his national squad in any game; that player cannot play for any other national squad! I know what we germans will get to hear should we win the Euro…. “yeah but your strikers aren’t even german :-)”
But then again…. who cares

Matthias: That rule exists…once a player has played for the A National team, he can’t play for another team anymore. However, this does not extend to the junior national squads. Either, they have to expand it to the junior squads or they have to come up with a scheme, where national FAs have to pay an ‘education fee’, if they take over a player who’s gone through the junior national squads of another country.

Posted from  Australia

Interesting thought. The only problem with requiring all FAs to pay for players who’ve gone through another system is that it would hurt small countries. It would also hurt the players who grow up in larger countries where they play a few times on the youth squads but are not quite good enough to play for the full A team.

As an example, there are a number of kids who have dual nationality and who play in the French youth system (usually because they grow up in France as children or grandchildren of immigrants), but because the competition is so stiff will never make the France A team. I think they should have the option of then playing for their second country if they could make a difference there, without being penalized.

Posted from  United States

Laurie: I believe, the current system actually favors the bigger teams and disadvantages the smaller ones. Petric and Rakitic figured, that their chances for big tournaments are better with Croatia than with Switzerland…so they chose to play for Croatia. Nothing the Swiss could do about it - even though they had invested hundred of thousands of dollars in his development. That seems hardly fair, does it? I think, they should have to make a commitment at U-21 level. Remember, if you’re good enough to make the U-21 squad, you might as well have a chance to make the A team.

Posted from  Australia

How is Neuville 50% Swiss if his parents are 100% German and 100% Italian? In Europe your nationality is not based on where you were born but the nationality of your parents and considering all of them (except for Podolski, he’s 100% Polish) have a German or part German parent that means they have a right to get a German nationality.

Posted from  Netherlands

No João, in Europe nationality is based on “right of blood”, “right of the soil” or on both of them in different countries, there’s no “united” law. And just to be clear Klose’s father, Józef Kloze was born in Poland in 1947 so wouldn’t that make Miroslav 100% Polish;)

Perhaps if the Swiss were more willing to extend citizenship to people who fled the Balkan wars and less inclined to elect xenophobic “nationalists” like Blocher, more players like Petric, Rakitic, Kuzmanovic, etc would choose to play for Switzerland.

The idea of some kind of compensation for having developed a player makes a lot more sense when one is talking about clubs, which are inherently commercial organisations, that it does about something as potentially emotive and inherently complicated as national identity.

Posted from  Italy

In case of Klose and Podolski there’s the Bundesvertriebenengesetz (Federal Expellee Law) which paved the way for their German passports. This law takes care of so called German nationals and ethnic Germans, who live/lived in Eastern Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_after_World_War_II

This law allowed both the Podolski and Klose family to seek asylum in West Germany during the cold war. I think Lukas Podolski’s grandmother is a native German speaker, which probably puts her in the ethnic German category and thus allowed the Podolskis to make the law count for them.

So you could try and integrate those circumstances in percentages as well.

Ursus: What are you talking about? They all have Swiss nationality - otherwise, that wouldn’t be a discussion. More than half of the team has non-Swiss roots: Cabanas, Berahmi, Yakin, Vonlanthen, Senderos, Barnetta, N’Koufo, Inler, Fernandez…are the first who come to mind. The question is more, why people like Petric don’t want to represent the country that gave them shelter from war, an education and economic safety.
Idiots like Blocher have a strong follwoing in every single country in Europe.

Posted from  Australia

Gaah, Podolski and Klose. Sigh :/

Posted from  Poland

I’m talking about an overall environment that they (and more importantly, perhaps, their families) may well perceive as unwelcoming even if they have citizenship.

And while you’re right that anti-immigration parties exist virtually everywhere, I can’t think of any Western European country in which a Blocher-like party got as much as 30% of the vote for Parliament.

Just to be clear, I’m not having a go at Switzerland per se; I was just trying to propose one reason why these players may have chosen to play for another country.

Posted from  Italy

Fantastic discussion! I am tired of people accusing the French of poaching players from Africa and all. The only difference between our players and these German players is the German players are indistinguishably white, and the names are somewhat German sounding so it’s inconspicuous (Mario Gomez is a glaring exception, of course.) All of France’s players are completely legitimate Frenchmen, they know nothing of life outside of France, except maybe when they were young children. Other teams have glaring abuses though: Portugal have Deco, who is a pure Brazilian, the Croats have one too, and others as well.

Allez les Bleus!!!

Posted from  United States

ursus: In Austria. I’m not disagreeing with our overall statement - I chose to leave Switzerland for a reason. It’s interesting nevertheless that secondos from Italy, Spain, African nations and even France seem to have no problem making that decision. While the majority from former Yugoslav countries do.
Anyhow. They made their decision. Would have been good to have them - especially Petric. But now we have to deal with what we have…meaning, we have to play boring defensive football. So, the next time you are bored watching Switzerland play, blame Petric and Rakitic. Hahahaha.

Posted from  Australia

Opperput:

How sadly mendacious your comment is …

Klose’s father, born in 1947, may have “Jozef Kloze” in his passport.

B u t : He is a “Josef Klose” !!!

Why ?

Because way back then the German minority in once purely German-dominated “S c h l e s i e n” (Home of many German world-famous poets, artists, scientists, etc. etc. - as many as the whole Polish nation cannot amass)…

( = German land for several hundred years but donated to Poles as a compensation for what Stalin stole from them in the east)

… was oppressed (i.e. those who had managed to stay in contrast to those who were subjected to what is nowadays known as “ethnic cleansing”)
and forced to polonize their names.

They were - under threat of prosecution - not even allowed to speak their native (= German) tongue in the open. Truly an easy way to make a “Josef” into a “Jozef” and a “Klose” into a “Kloze”.

A pitiful bunch of forgers indeed.

You folks were really treated cruelly, unjustly, inhumanly by the Nazi-Germans. No doubt. I fully subscribe to that. It continues to bite my soul.

But unfortunately you all-too-often take unfair advantage of this circumstance. And I am witnessing that most non-German ( and of course non-Polish) Europeans see it that way.

There are still too many Kaczczczinskis around.

You are the masters of over-self-victimization, of egocentric self-pity - and have been so for many decades. Honestly. Understandable in the context of your history.

BUT THEN AGAIN IT IS REALLY GETTING ON EVERYBODY’S NERVES SOMETIMES - NOW MORE AND MORE.

Commenting your ethnic percentage games:

Why on earth do you think those families chose Germany as a better alternative to Poland ?
Any idea? Because Poland is the non-plus-ultra of fatherlands ?

Why do you think so many people who have emigrated to the US, happy to be immersed into the so-called melting pot, confess to their new identity? Would you still argue US citizens of Irish, Nicaraguan, Bangladeshi etc. origin are actually still, or should rightfully be considered as, Irishmen, Nicaraguans, Bangladeshis ?

Polish your thinking, mate.

Bullshit, every “Germanic” nation in the tournament has more foreign players than Germany. Oh and take a look at “France”, it’s nothing but an all-African team. I don’t know why Germany is the only team which isn’t allowed to have national team players with some foreign ancestors.

you are what you chose to be. Let them pick who they want to play and respect their choice - after all, we expect them to put their hearts into it and criticize them forever if they don’t.

That being said, your profiles are hilarious.

… well, most things have been said. The families of Klose and Podolski had been, german, polish, german again… You could as well ask “how french is zizou?” But I wont, I don’t care.
In Germany we call it integration, one of the biggest problems these days here and everywhere else and some of us are even a bit proud that it starts working (besides sports too, of course). So why split it up again? And why even in sports?
I really don’t get the point of this “article”.
Btw. there’s a tv spot in german TV right now, you see the players parents having a barbecue. You can see different colors, hear different languages, and “see” different religions. I feel good about that.
Schlaand for the cup!

Posted from  Germany

fyi: http://tv.dfb.de/index.php?view=648

Posted from  Germany