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#2 The core of the team has become stagnant
After dominating both international and club football for most of the 1970s and 1980s, Germany took a backseat in promoting of talent, with the result being that the country went into the 1990s largely relying on aged players, which culminated in a group stage exit at EURO 2000 as defending champions.
After that ouster, German football authorities scoured the world in search of the best practices to lift its football and arrived at the decision to promote youth development.
It was decided that all clubs across the German professional league systems would as a matter of urgency implement a youth team programme which saw to the development and promotion of young players into the senior team.
The consequent effect was that by the end of the decade, most Bundesliga clubs had at its core a young set of German players who had progressed through the ranks.
The national team also benefitted from this, as most beneficiaries of the program were part of the Germany U21 team who won the 2009 European Championship, and gave a good showing of themselves at the World Cup a year later in South Africa.
The crowning glory came in Brazil when Gotze (himself a product of the program) scored the injury-time winner in the final against Argentina. The then 22-year-old was a supporting cast in a crew which had main leads such as Manuel Neuer, Thomas Muller, Jerome Boateng, Toni Kroos and Matts Hummels, who were all young German players that had been blooded in the youth development program.
Eight years after announcing themselves on the global stage, and the crux of the team is still the same. Neuer, Muller, Boateng, Hummels, Reus and Toni Kroos all continue to play key roles in the team, with young players not given an opportunity to handle the baton.
The law of diminishing returns is a well-known principle in the business and economics world, and football is not immune from its consequences.
The German national team has achieved much success over the last decade with largely the same crop of players, and with a dearth of young players being ushered onto the scene like Muller and co were ten years ago, it is only imperative that having achieved such upwards trajectory, there is nowhere else to go but down.
