German Big Dogs poll

Beckenbauer in a canter

... but, you know, Kahn was a goalkeeper, Seeler was a centre forward, and Rummenigge was sort of a winger, wasn't he?

in a stroll more like xp

Indeed!

... but, you know, Kahn was a goalkeeper, Seeler was a centre forward, and Rummenigge was sort of a winger, wasn't he?

― Too Busy Thinking About Mr. Abie (Tom D.), Thursday, June 21, 2012 12:49 PM (6 minutes ago)

i'm not sure about 'big dogs' (surely there is a german compound word here?) but the type definitely exists

i was about to query gerd muller, but really he doesn't seem to have been important enough, despite all the goals

http://www.tz-online.de/bilder/2010/09/21/927990/1472324004-karl-heinz-rummenigge.9.jpg

feel like Mueller was important enough but still voting for der Kaiser

http://www.365gunspor.com/resimler/12231.jpg

Ach, grossehünden or something like that would've been perfect.

These guys typically go on to be presidents of things, I feel. Klinsi might be an omission here, but he just seems so *nice*. Bierhoff seems to be 'team manager' of the national side as well, maybe he was a bigger figure than I remember.

no, klinsi wasn't there at all

bierhoff was a relatively limited player but he has a case for inclusion here, he just has a sort of patrician demeanour and obviously the list requires at least one talismanic big centuh forward

to strike a note of caution, maybe the lack of sustained media coverage of their foibles in the british press gives them an undue dignity, and that really they are just so many rutting alpha bawbags who just happened to be better at football than their uk counterparts

case in point -- gising stefan effenberg and finding the midfield general looking like any other ed hardyite aging playboy

Could be a case for the inclusion of Bernd Schuster here, though cos of shenannigans he didn't play that many times for his country

I'm going for Beckenbauer, although Hoeness has fondness for Jens Jeremies

But Bayern's president, Uli Hoeness, was in no mood for self-pity. ''We have to ask ourselves why this happened,'' he said. ''Do we have the players who really force the issue? Do we have enough of them? I don't want to criticise the team but I saw a few things I didn't like. I'm not sure how they will respond, I don't want to make any negative or positive predictions. But I didn't see a Jens Jeremies today, a guy who bites opponents in the calf on the way on to the pitch.''

Lothar Matthäus because he is the first imperious German Big Dog I remember and consequently all subsequent have seemed some how less than him.

http://www.bvb-freunde.de/bvblegenden/matthias_sammer_3.jpg

Was it Sammer or Effenberg who gave the German fans 'the finger' at USA '94?

Must have been Effenberg? It might've been the end of his international career actually.

Yeah. I just wiki'd him. Only played 35 times for the national team.

I voted for Sammer, he was the most elegant of players. That's a compelling case for Matthäus though xps, only enhanced by his going on forever. I can imagine finding him, carved in marble, on some edifice in Rome.

to strike a note of caution, maybe the lack of sustained media coverage of their foibles in the british press gives them an undue dignity, and that really they are just so many rutting alpha bawbags who just happened to be better at football than their uk counterparts

case in point -- gising stefan effenberg and finding the midfield general looking like any other ed hardyite aging playboy

― dis civilization and its contents (nakhchivan), Thursday, June 21, 2012 12:15 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the late 1990s, Effenberg was rarely out of the tabloids, especially when he left his wife Martina and revealed an affair with Claudia Strunz, who at that time was the wife of former team mate Thomas Strunz.

Thomas Hassler deserved a mention.

Kahn had a colourful old lovelife too (xp)

and matthäus has been married four times. there's a pattern here.

So disappointed to find this isn't a poll about big German dogs

thinking of the current team, bastian is probably there or thereabouts already which seems amazing when u remember him as a young winger

gomez is 26 and should have two more competitions as centre forward to solidify his place but, as good a player as he is, maybe doesn't have that coldness....

thomas muller will probably end up with about 400 caps but maybe he will remain ever so slightly peripheral

It's some combination of being consummate team players, while completely dominating that team, I think. Roy Keane would've made a fine grosshund if he'd been from Köln rather than Cörk.

yes that's a good way of looking at it

gomez perhaps needs to integrate to a greater extent with the rest by becoming more of a drogbaish defender-crushing talisman than an oversized poacher

I was mildly obsessed by Sammer as a kid. Mattaus was winding down but I still loved him. God knows how though, it isn't like German football wasn't regularly on tv.

Only one I've ever seen a lot of is Ballack and I guess Schweini. Ballack has always been a bawlbag tho.

Voting Sammer.

Lahm as close as a full back nicknamed Magic Dwarf can come to being a big dog?

mizzell otm

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Germany have now racked up an agreeably mild and alluring 16 years of hurt, most notably taking in six trophyless years of the current modernising Wunderkind era. And this is really what it's all about: the system. Transfixed by its own generational ineptitude, English football has been desperate for a friend for some time, some benevolent head prefect on which it can develop an imitative crush.

can't really think of schweini (or any other of the deutsche new breed) as a big dog

robben & ribery are surely current bayern's thwarted squabbling siamese twin big dog?

Real big dogs win things, is the lesson here.

Bayern Munich have confirmed that Matthias Sammer is to become their new sporting director, following the departure of Christian Nerlinger.

Sammer, 44, was technical director at the German Football Association (DFB) for six years, and has decided to join the Bavarian club, despite starring for rivals Borussia Dortmund between 1993-1998.

http://bundesligafanatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/07192012_bundesligaclassic_euro1972_header-776x290.png

Beautiful. Strange military bearing to those tracky tops though.

it's like the bizarro universe Reservoir Dogs.

http://i.imgur.com/xfF56DK.jpg