You read it here first

THE FNB Stadium is packed to its newly upgraded capacity of 110,000 fans.

FIFA’s president Issa Hayatou, fresh from finally ousting the aging Sepp Blatter to become Africa’s first leader of the global game, emerges from the VIP tribune and walks onto the pitch to be presented to the players who have battled their way through to reach the ultimate pinnacle of any professional footballer’s career, the World Cup final.

Unfortunately for Hayatou, there are no African teams before him on this day as reigning champions Senegal were defeated in the semi-final. No, this final will be contested by two of Europe’s greatest superpowers, Germany and France.

Both teams are graced with the sublime talents of players at the peak of their powers; players who have grown up together, developed as footballers and men together under the watchful eye of their federations ever since they were hand- picked for the task in their teenage years way back at the turn of the century. These really are the teams for the new millennium.

Dateline: Cobh, October 25, 2002

Eight years earlier and an unlikely setting, perhaps, but the 200 or so hardy Irish football fans gathered on a chilly autumn evening are being rewarded for their efforts in making it to St Colman’s Park. Many of them are kids running around the terraces, not even watching the football, just drawn to the floodlit grounds like moths to a lightbulb. Before them, though, are footballers who will one day become household names across the world, young men whose day will come, maybe in that stadium in Johannesburg in the 2010 World Cup final. The fans may not realise but they are present at the birth of, not one, but two of the finest teams of the next generation.

The teams are the Under-17 sides from France and Germany, and though they are playing out a scoreless draw it is a game of exceptional quality, of slick passing, bright creativity, tough tackling and passionate commitment. All this, despite the fact both teams have already qualified for the next stage of the UEFA Under-17 European Championships.

Brian Kerr’s Ireland side were victims of both sides earlier in the week, never recovering from an edgy start before losing 3-0 to the Germans in Cobh and narrowly losing to the French 1-0 at Turner’s Cross.

“Both teams had very good groups of players from what I saw,” Kerr said. “Of course, it’s easier for the smaller countries to move players onto the next level. We’ve had a very good strike rate when you think about the team from the European Championships in Cyprus in 1998 - six of those players have already been capped at senior level. If you’re a big country like France or Germany you would be happy with one or two coming through from every age group.

“But when you’ve got set-ups like the French at Clarefontaine, and in Germany as well, it makes your chances of bringing through more than that a lot better. They have co-ordinated structures for monitoring their players and the coaching, and the French FA has complete control with their integrated coaching, player development and international squads.

“Both Germany and France have established coaching cultures, so many players to choose from and the finance to see their plans through. It is bound to be easier for them

“I remember coming across the French side at the World Championships in Malaysia in 1997. They had two strikers called Trezeguet and Henry with the sub strikers called Nicolas Anelka and Louis Saha. The players that I saw the other week from both countries look like good crops as well.”

In a game full of uncertainties, it may seem fanciful to be nominating teenagers as future world beaters. In football, the prediction game has few rules, yet is littered with pitfalls. It was not so long ago, after all, that a young Manchester United starlet called John Curtis was being nominated as a future England captain, while on these shores the huge potential of Liam George was being touted as the answer to Irish prayers. What makes the case for French and German potential easier to realise , the variables less difficult to predict, is that the respective federations have had the foresight to implement youth development systems that not only produce highly talented players and rounded individuals on a consistent basis, but also safeguard the future of their national teams.

While an elite cadre of Premiership clubs execute a coup d’etat at the FA which will reduce further the significance of their national team, and the FAI in Merrion Square are still raking over the ashes of Japan/Korea 2002, the French and the Germans have already put in train their preparations for the 2010 World Cup finals. They are each going about it with different philosophies, one emphasising the team, the other concentrating on the individual, but it is not the way round you would imagine.

The French Football Federation’s national training centre at Clarefontaine has become a byword for excellence since 1998 when a French World Cup victory on home soil validated its existence by filling Aime Jacquet’s winning side with its graduates. Tucked away in the heart of the Rambouillet Forest, 30 miles west of Paris, this citadel of French football, the National Football Centre, boasts five training pitches, a stadium pitch for matches and even an indoor ‘real grass’ artificial pitch. There is a medical centre, gym and fitness room, a self-service restaurant and cafeteria and a jogging track through the woods. It is where Pierre Mankowski began the job of nurturing and developing the latest batch of superstars to roll off the Clarefontaine conveyor belt before he was asked to join the senior team as assistant coach to new manager Jacques Santini.

Mankowski, who was 51 at the beginning of this month, was a coach at Paris St Germain in 1997/98 before a spell as Cameroon’s assistant manager at France 98. From there he coached Strasbourg until he was recruited by the FFF in 2000 to manager the Under-16 national team. He was with the same group of players for two years before Santini gave him a greater calling to serve the tricolour back in August and the match in Cobh was his last in charge.

Mankowski and his fellow coaches’ task at Clarefontaine is to educate their players with these four basic concepts in mind: to forget what is at stake, that results only come from the game, to respect the principles of playing soccer and play within the structure the coach gives you and, finally, victory is the only goal.

Mankowski says: “For us our role is to build a very, very collective group. We are in charge of our teams for four years and for us they play together, they live together very well, and that’s very important.

“It’s very important that as a team they play with passion,” he says, punching his chest to emphasise the point, “but also that they are many very good players.

Players enter Clarefontaine at age 13, but they have already been preparing for this from the age of 11 when they are identified and monitored through district sides and then regional teams. The best 20-30 13-year-olds then go to the national training centre where from day one the objectives are clear: to become a professional player with the maximum chance of succeeding and to keep up with their studies so they can have a career in case soccer does not work out.

Throughout their time at the centre, the students are put through regular assessment of technical skills as well as physical, medical and even psychological testing, to chart their progress and well-being. And their daily routines are structured with meticulous detail according to their age and recovery times. Under 13s, for instance, take part in two to three training sessions and one match each week while 13-15-year-olds have four to five sessions and a match over a 35-week season. At 16-17 years, there are five to seven training sessions and one match each week with 40 matches per year and four to five weeks without any training at all, while the 17-20 year professionals have seven to nine sessions and one match.

It may sound like a football factory but Mankowski says: “The Federation really believes that this work at Clarefontaine is very important for the game of tomorrow. The better job we as coaches do in the development of youth players, the more accomplished they will be as professional players.

“The FFF also keeps a close eye on the professional clubs because they might not always be concerned with the best interests of the young players. They feel that out of all the elements, the development of the technical ability is the most important.”

Mankowski’s opposite number in the German U17 side is 50-year-old Bernd Stober, a Deutscher Fussball-Bund (DFB) coach since 1987. He has a good track record at youth international level, guiding German sides to third place at the 1996 European Championships and fourth at the FIFA World Championships in Egypt the following year.

Stober’s view differs from the French obsession with team-building. “We just prepare players,” he says, matter of factly. “We are not building teams. For us it is very important in youth football to prepare individual talents rather than forging units.”

In essence, his view epitomises the new German strategy towards youth development, its Extended Talent Promotion Programme launched last summer by DFB president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder.

While the French took stock of their own system in the early 90s, and are reaping the long-term benefits, the Germans were a little slower to catch on, following the pattern of all addictive personalities and not realising it had a problem until it reached rock bottom. The nadir was the debacle at Euro 2000 when the senior side were sent packing in the group stages of the tournament in Holland and Belgium and Mayer- Vorfelder made it his mission to lay the necessary foundations which would avoid another painful calamity.

Those cornerstones mean a completely different tack to the French, throwing a training blanket across the whole country with coaching for all through every age group rather selecting an elite group at 11 and concentrating on them.

The DFB hails its efforts as unique in world football and at a cost of 10 million per year, bankrolled by German blue-chip companies Mercedes Benz, adidas and Deutsche Telekom, the project boasts special training for 22,000 girls and boys aged between 11 and 17 who will receive special training under the supervision of some 1,200 coaches, at almost 390 training base camps distributed all over Germany overseen by 29 full-time co-ordinators.

It means Jo¨rg Daniel, the sports director of the Talent Promotion Programme, backed by sponsorship, can claim to preside over “a youth football paradise.”

“It goes without saying that the established structures have their merits, but there is always room for improvement in other areas such as geographical coverage, training frequency and the coaches' actual qualification.”

Whereas the French put all their eggs in one, elite basket, the German programme offers training at no fewer than 390 bases with an even geographic spread across the country so that each centre serves around 70 clubs. “The end result is a tightly-woven network which will make it much easier to identify and promote talented youngsters,” Mayer-Vorfelder said. “Our objective is for every young footballer to be given the same chance to be discovered and receive special training, no matter where he or she lives.”

The Germans believe they are scoring on two fronts with this programme, starting their coaching at much younger age levels and yet not missing out on later developers. As Stober explains: “It is one of the programme’s main goals to find talented young players, and for them to benefit from the best possible training and coaching. So, why not begin with children at their best learning age? Teach them a new drill, a new trick - they absorb everything in no time.” As for older children, “there are many late developers. Just look at Christoph Metzelder and Miroslav Klose who were well into their teens before they even joined one of the big Bundesliga clubs.”

Both Stober and his French counterpart Pierre Mankowski believe they have players, all still just 16, who no one will be losing sight of in the next 10 years or so.

Stober advances the cause for Iranian-born German forward Aschkan Dejagah, who scored twice in the three-goal win over Ireland and is rated very highly by his club Hertha Berlin.

“I think our number nine, Dejagah, is Germany’s outstanding player in his age group, but there are lot of players in this group who can make it and go to the very top.”

France’s future will have a lot to do with the progress of Saint-Etienne striker Stephen Vincent and Rennes midfielder Yohan Gourcuff, according to Mankowski, and their performances in Ireland would certainly bear that out.

Gourcuff himself is confident of a bright future for this current group of players thanks to the education and training they are receiving deep in the Rambouillet Forest.

There is a good environment around this group of players and I felt a true competitive spirit. They were very happy to qualify for the next round, but they were also really disappointed to finish second in the group to Germany (on goals scored). That proves they are a team that wants to keep winning and it is a good sign for their future. And I hope I can be there in 2010 to help them do that at a World Cup!”

It is not just the French who are already eyeing World Cup success 2010. Talent Promotion Programme director Jo¨rg Daniel believes a golden age for German football is on the horizon. “Naturally, not everyone will end up holding the Championship trophy aloft, but eventually the programme will have a tremendous impact. The game in Germany will benefit from a higher number of more competitive, and better skilled, footballers.”

If Germany and France progress with just half the success they are predicting, the stadium in Johannesburg eight years from now is going to be the place to be. It should make for quite a spectacle. Try and book your ticket now.