Kicker
A correspondent of Kicker met the former coach of the national football team of Germany, the current head coach of the Azerbaijani national team, Berti Vogts, in Baku. This time Vogts came to Baku for the opening of the World Football Championship for Girls U-17. In his interview he spoke about the achievements and difficulties of Azerbaijani football, the German national team, and his Borussia.
- What changes were contributed to Azerbaijani football thanks to you?
- Previously only teams full of foreign players were playing in Azerbaijan. Today there is an obligatory rule: every team should have at least three local players on the pitch, plus one more under-21. At the same time, Azerbaijanis are quite strong and three or four local players play in international matches.
- Are the mentalities of Azerbaijani and German players alike?
- Here players don’t want to train twice a day. But they have to do it to achieve a middle European level. I have once compared them. Two years ago Borussia (Dortmund) played against Karabakh (Agdam) in a qualification round for the Europa League. Dortmund managed to play a match in the Bundesliga between home and away matches, while in Azerbaijan the championship was stopped. After the game against Dortmund, the Azerbaijani players were allowed home for three days. They didn’t train at all. Dortmund had 14 trainings, and the club had five trainings in Azerbaijan. It is difficult to explain it to them. They think that they are tortured by training. But they should move forward. I can bear complaints about awful training.
- What are other differences between German and Azerbaijani football players?
- The main problem is that they don’t want to criticize their team-mates on the pitch. But it doesn’t matter what you are saying during the game. After the end of a match this topic should be closed. But they don’t understand it. You have to tell the truth on the pitch to motivate each other. That’s how football functions.
- What about infrastructure?
- Today every club should have a training center with two football pitches – it was not so when I came to the team in 2008. There were clubs which had no pitches for training at all; they had to share them with other clubs. Now the local league has understood why we tried to gain a separate training pitch for each club. In academies 80% are local players. But they come to football when it’s late. That is why they cannot read playing situations, they cannot solve them like us, relying on intuition. Here football is taught in other way: we should explain how to deal with this or that situation. It is a long process.
- Is the World Football Championship – Girls U-17 important for Baku?
- I hope this championship will increase the attention paid to football. Six small beautiful stadiums for 10-12 thousand spectators were built for this event. The championship is also important for the local football associations, which have an opportunity to be presented to FIFA and UEFA. There is a small chance that Azerbaijan and Georgia will send a joint application to hold the European Cup in 2020. The current tournament might help that. Azerbaijan is directed to the West and the EU. Eurovision brought a lot of advantages to Azerbaijan. We think that some German mass media were wrong to publish negative articles about this country ahead of the musical contest.
- Do you feel sad to be a helper in development of football here and not fighting for some title with a club?
- If I felt it, I wouldn’t sign the contract here. Probably someday I will work as a consultant or a sporting director, but I don’t want to feel stress of the work of head-coach. 14 days a month I spend in Azerbaijan, the rest of the time I am at home, watching my Borussia.
