Exclusive interview with Raphael Honigstein!

August 13th, 2010 | by: Ethan Dean-Richards | View Comments

Through the brilliant tool that is Twitter, the England World Cup Blog has managed to get an interview with one of Europe’s premier sports journalists, Raphael Honigstein. He is the Guardian’s German correspondent, Talksport’s German expert, has a regular column on SportsIllustrated.com, and also writes about English football for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s biggest selling daily newspaper. Via email, we talked about everything from the differences in English and German football, to Spezi…

Hi Raphael, thanks for giving the England World Cup Blog a chance to talk to you. We’ve had Geoff Hurst and Martin Keown on here, but you’re honestly our favourite interviewee and our biggest coup. Now, we’ve already read your interview on the excellent European Football Weekends, so in an attempt to generate some original content we might have to get a bit…creative with the questions. Here we go:

1.) First off, you cover club football in both England and Germany, but if you could only choose one to watch – in some kind of nightmare scenario – which would it be?

That is indeed a nightmare scenario. Hmm, on balance I would go for the Bundesliga. Nothing to do with quality but simply for the fact that my team is involved. I couldn’t bear not watching them. 

2.) Aaah, ”your team” – you tease. We’d love to spend an hour guessing (it’s Dortmund, isn’t it? Or Schalke? Or Werder!), but we know you’ll never tell. So onto a broader point of discussion: from afar, everything seems pretty rosy in German football right now – the national team was most people’s favourite at the World Cup, fans own the clubs and Bayern made the Champions League final last year. Is everything going as well as it seems? 

I’ve actually been outed by Talksport a couple of times – when I subconsciously said “we” in reference to a Bundesliga team – but it’s better to cloud the issue a little. Football is so emotive and tribal that it doesn’t lend itself to much rational discussion and your particular affiliation is always the first thing made into a stick to beat you up with, sadly. 

As for German football, it is indeed going well, albeit from a fairly low base. A few years ago, I picked up an early 80s vintage copy of the German Playboy magazine – purely for research purposes, of course  - that featured an interview with  HSV manager Ernst Happel. “Can anyone challenge the Bundesliga’s top status in the world?” was one of the questions they asked. So in purely sporting terms, I’d say there’s still a long way to go. We need many more managers of Louis van Gaal’s calibre to truly get ahead, for example. The other structural problem is Bayern’s unhealthy dominance. Financially, things are looking fairly good but sound finances don’t necessarily convert into big box office. Overseas interest in solidly-run but humdrum Eintracht Frankfurt is limited. Without overseas TV money, the league can’t really grow. Catch 22.

Perception is also a huge issue. For ten years, few people in the UK knew that Lucio (Bayer and Bayern) was a fantastic player. But as soon as he moved to Inter, he’s seen as a superstar. 

3.) The danger in revealing your team is substantially less when you support West Brom {sighs}. Anyway, the English perception of German football must be one of the most warped – most English football followers seem to write the Bundesliga off. In fact, remember the Match of the Day panel at the World Cup panel infamously deciding that only a couple of German players could get into England’s team following their 4-1 victory – exactly how wrong were they? For the England World Cup Blog, only Ashley Cole looked like he’d keep his place

I remember Michael Owen used the same “how many of them would get into our XI?” line AFTER the Croatia defeat in Nov 2007. Perhaps he was right even – strictly speaking. But football doesn’t work like that, of course. Getting the best out of the collective talents has been Germany’s secret of success over the decades whereas England always appear smaller than the sum of their parts somehow.

4.) Also, do people in Germany feel as attached to the Bundesliga as people in England do the Premier League - e.g. constantly asserting that’s it’s the best in the world?

The average Bundesliga fan is no more deluded about his league’s status than the average PL fan, I think. I find that genuine football supporters are pretty realistic about their football country’s pros and cons. It’s only when it comes to specific teams that some develop massive blind spots or a complete lack of perspective. The “right or wrong, it’s my club” brigade ensure that many, many PL clubs are not held properly accountable for the actions of their owners and managers. 

5.) So genuine football fans can see the reality of the situation with their national football team, whichever team that might be, but how do the German and English media compare in their attitudes to their own national teams? Is the German media more realistic and in general less extreme when it talks about Germany?

Bild, the biggest tabloid, is just as extreme. The difference is there’s only one Bild in the whole of Germany.  The rest of the print media are either local or broadsheet and therefore naturally more balanced. We also don’t have a SKY-Sports-type rolling news channel to feed the hype. I found most of the English print media’s coverage pretty neutral and spot on this year, actually. As for the “we can win it” headlines, I don’t think anyone takes them too seriously, and that includes players, journos and readers. 

6.) And do you buy into the idea that the English media is one of the major factors in the national team’s failures – because it’s so extreme (entirely positive or entirely negative)?

It’s not a major factor, but it’s one of the factors.  It’s not the extremism per se but the total disregard of ‘news reporters’ (in other words, not the football writers) and their editors for what you might call the greater good of English football. The Triesman-story was a classic example. Little to no journalistic merit but maximum damage to the FA and the England bid. The FA panicked and effectively extended Capello’s deal by two years before the World Cup, a decision that cost them GBP 12m.

No one would have written that story in Germany, let alone gone out of their way to frame Triesman. Bild have tons of material on people that they won’t use.  I also found the mock outrage about the Capello Index totally over the top. Another problem is this, in my view: a substantial number of English footy journos are considerably smarter than the people in charge of running English football. The former are in the demolition business, the latter in construction. That’s a very unhealthy dynamic. 

7.) That’s really interesting, because, certainly in terms of expressing football knowledge, EWCB is always more impressed when it hears journalists as pundits than when it hears ex-players, and yet the ex-players are always the ones that become managers. This is a bit of a difficult question to say yes to, but do you think you could be a manager? And if not you, is there any journalist you reckon could be particularly good?

That’s flattering. I wouldn’t dream of dabbling in management without proper qualifications, however. I might be able to read a game fairly well without them but wouldn’t have a clue as to decent training regimes, things like pro-zone and man-management. Then there’s the whole wheeling-dealing you’re expected to do in England…. It would certainly be fascinating to see a Ralf Rangnick-type coach – someone without extensive experience as a player, an outsider – succeed in England, that might well open the door for a lot of people who have the brains and the hunger but are not part of the establishment. 

8.)  On more solid ground, in your managerial…sorry, journalistic opinion, what do you think was the major contributing factor to England’s demise this time at the World Cup? And, based on that, could you pick out one aspect of English football that you think needs to change above all others in order for the national team to be successful?

I’m not sure how much of a demise we really witnessed. I spoke to John Barnes before the Germany game and he was adamant that England are not under-achievers in big tournaments. He said that England in fact always fulfilled their potential and muddled through before getting knocked out by a better team. It’s a provocative theory, but quite persuasive in light of the evidence.  If you want to narrow it down to one single, basic factor, I’d say England fail because they fail to play as a team. Quite a few things would need to change in order to improve the situation. Adopting a more humble approach would perhaps be a good starting point.

9.) Yeah, ‘demise’ might be revealing some of the EWCB’s own, sub-conscious, over-confidence in England (consciously, the EWCB is always aware of England’s NT’s relative mediocrity). 

One difference a lot of the media focused (perhaps even fixated) on between England and teams like Germany in the World Cup was their 4-4-2…ish formation. Do England need to play five in midfield, or was it like all the talk of Joe Cole being important - in reality a minor detail? Should England try to change or just try to play to their perceived strengths?

The 4-4-2 stuff was all a bit of red herring. Germany spent long spells of the Argentina and Spain games defending in two very straight lines of four. In possession, it was completely different, but then so were England. If anything, their problem was specifically NOT playing 4-4-2 but everyone panicking and losing their positions. I do think there’s a case to be made for Rooney as the main striker in front of Gerrard  - you can draw that as 4-5-1, 4-3-3, 4-4-1-1 or 4-2-3-1;  the numbers alone mean little – and I think Lampard works best with two men behind or next to him in the centre. But these things can’t explain for the total break-down that England suffered during the Algeria game and v Germany in the second half.

I believe that Capello, after experimenting quite a lot with formations in the beginning of his tenure, decided that a bog-standard 4-4-2 is the most comfortable system for the players. Eriksson was of the same opinion. In a way, that’s right of course: without any “half”-positions, everyone should know where they’re supposed to play and it’s in theory very easy to keep your shape. Blaming the Germany defeat on Capello’s formation is a bit like blaming the architect when cowboy builders trash the place. The best plans are worth nothing without players who can put them into place. 

One criticism you could level at Capello is that England were like most national teams: simply a collection of the biggest available players who were all playing their own individual game. Apart from Gerrard’s goal v the US, I did not see one move that looked as if it had come from the training ground. Again, I found Barnes very insightful in that respect. He said that England’s main strategy over the years has been to look for their main players to do something special. Which is another way of saying that they haven’t really had a strategy. 

10.) So, we’ve spoken about football more generally and England, more depressingly: now, with more selfish motives, the EWCB would really like to hear how you got into sports journalism, and if it really is the dream job it sounds like. Do you still enjoy watching football as much with it being your job? Was it worth the effort it took to get into?

I got into this whole thing by accident. Friends of mine who were in the media one day suggested I wrote “something about London” while I was studying Law here. I started writing about music and fashion, then inherited the football job at Süddeutsche Zeitung from the one and only Ronald Reng, who moved on to Barcelona in 2002. It had nothing to do with ability, in other words. I won’t lie – I love my job. There are days when you can get a little jaded but I’m supremely lucky because I can concentrate on the bigger games and am therefore spared Tuesday night trips in November to Blackburn etc etc. 

11.) We’ve heard rainy Tuesday nights in Blackburn are severely underrated, but we’ll have to move on to the final stretch of our (magnificent) interview: some one-word answer questions:

Who’s your favourite player ever?  

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. 

Do you have a tip for the next World Cup?  

Yes: watch it at home.

Do you know any up-and-coming stars that we won’t have heard of?

He’s not really unheard of, but I’m a big fan of Gojko Kacar (HSV midfielder). 

And finally: Vimto or Lucozade (it’s a running theme on the blog)?

Ahem, I’m not partial to either of them. Give me a good Spezi (google it) instead.

Well that’s it, the end of what was a great experience for the England World Cup Blog. Thanks again, Raphael, and good luck covering the new season!