If German football has a grandfatherly authority, then it is probably Horst Hrubesch, 72, youth director at Hamburger SV. He has lived through several generations of footballers, first as a feared header monster on the pitch, where he won the European Cup with HSV and the European Championship with the DFB-Elf. Later, as a coach, he led, among other things, the German U21 national team to the European Championship triumph – at that time with the “golden generation” around Manuel Neuer, Jerome Boateng, Mats Hummels, Sami Khedira and Mesut Özil, who became world champions in Brazil in 2014. Other times were what Hrubesch very much regrets. Because he thinks: A lot of things were going better in German youth football back then than they are today.
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