We dive deep into the story of TSG Hoffenheim and Julian Nagelsmann, in an effort to understand what makes them so special.
You’re in a 14 metre square cage, feet firmly planted inside a tight circle in the middle. There’s silence, for now, but also a sense of urgency. Then it begins. Footballs are fired at you from eight different machines and you must control and pass them into one of 72 squares depending on the green light. At the risk of sounding like a fancy and niche virtual reality game, this isn’t one. It’s as real as Leicester’s fairytale last season.
Called the “Footbonaut”, this is a machine designed by Berlin-based Christian Guttler in order to improve footballers’ reflexes, to sharpen their control and awareness of the ball until it becomes second nature. It’s also flexible depending on training needs. A tablet allows the user to control the number of balls per minute, their speed and spin, it provides stadium noise, and one can also add defenders into the circle so as to heighten that “match-day experience”.
The cliché of the Germans being disciplined, organised and determined is one rooted in fact. But it was not until the stumble of World Cup 1998 followed by the debacle of Euro 2000 (for the uninitiated, they failed to win a game and lost to England in a match that Ralf Honigstein in Das Reboot describes as “an all-round embarrassment of footballing poverty”) that the Deutscher Fussball-Bund realised that was a change was essential if they wanted to continue to be relevant. This change came in the form of an extensive system overhaul – the introduction of a strong youth policy to find and systematically develop homegrown talent, the use of cutting-edge technology and statistics, the shift in footballing ideology and an evolution of tactics and thinking in order to adapt to the rapidly advancing arena of modern-day football.
