Jack Lambert
Hall of Famer
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2009
- Messages
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I don't have anything against other White players playing for Bayern, but from the identity point of view, this should be a primarily a German team. 8-9 Germans + 2-3 other high quality Whites would be ideal.
A Spanish team would NEVER EVER play with 3 Spanish starters, and rightly so! The fans there require the team to be overwhelmingly Spanish (with typically a couple of Argentinians which I believe are perceived as "oversees Spanish" by the fans). And rightly so! Some regional teams even go so far as to require the players to be from their region, like Barca preferring Catalans, The Basque teams - Basks etc. It's their well respected and very successful "cantera" system. That is one of the reasons (possibly the main reason?) why Spanish teams (both at the club as well as at the national level) are doing so well, while (for example) English and Italian national teams are loosing steam...
Bayern seem to have taken the opposite direction lately (ironically - since the arrival of Pep Guardiola who was oh-so-careful to fill the Barca team with Catalans) and has become a multinational corporation with no loyalty to their home fan-base. This is a pattern pioneered by the EPL clubs (where fans don't seem to care about player race or nationality) and which is now taking over European football by storm, especially the "Big Teams".
The funny thing is that an overwhelmingly German team (with players mostly from Bayern) just won a crushing victory in last year's World cup, so there is definitely no shortage of good German players. Instead they send away Bastian Schweinsteiger, Toni Kroos, Mario Goetze is sitting on the couch etc. Laughable stuff...
I agree. I wish that Bayern would keep playing Germans - as the dominate team in the Bundesliga, they send a lot of their players to Die Mannschaft. Most German clubs usually play with at least 5-6 Germans in their starting lineups, though. It's definitely not as bad as England.