Guest commentary

Michael Trobridge, Editor at Kick off!

For football purists, German football has become the benchmark. Its top-flight clubs and the national team have crafted an attacking game that is at times breathtakingly attractive. There’s a real hope here this will finally be the summer that Germany takes home the World Cup after a 24-year drought. After the disappointment of 2010 in South Africa, the Germans are sure to be fierce competitors in Brazil.  And that can only be good news for the Bundesliga.

Fired on by Jürgen Klopp’s Dortmund and Bayern Munich under Jupp Heynckes and now Pep Guardiola, the league has been steadily building up a head of steam. Last season saw both sides contest the Champions League final. Bundesliga attendance is setting new records and clubs are in rosy health thanks to strict financial rules. Not only is the Bundesliga currently Europe’s top grossing league in both fans and profits, it has also become the testing ground for international stars drawn by the mixture of traditional football values and high performance. Increasingly, people are talking about Bayern and Dortmund instead of Barcelona and Manchester United. Success at Brazil 2014 would boost the Bundesliga’s reputation even further.

Of course, we always knew here at Kick off! that we were covering the most interesting football league in the world! But it’s taken the Bundesliga’s recent sporting and financial renaissance to really catch the eyes of the soccer world.

We want to serve that international interest with our new Kick off! Youtube channel, produced in English and starting now as the Bundesliga restarts after its winter break. We’re sharing our best interviews and exclusive insider peeks as well as some real pearls from almost a decade of DW’s Bundesliga TV show. Want to know what it’s like to hang out behind the scenes with Bayern at their training camp in Qatar or explore Rio as people there gear up the World Cup? Or play football on motorbikes? It’s all on the Kick off! YouTube channel!

The Bundesliga’s come a long way since it was founded 50 years ago with 16 teams and poorly paid players. In fact, you can see exactly how far with our award-winning series 50 years of the Bundesliga. It’s jam-packed with fabulous archive footage and is guaranteed to bring you right up to date with the world-class league the Bundesliga is today. Which, I believe, is where we came in.

This summer, the Bundesliga will be turning 50 years old and Kick off! will be reporting on the history of the German top-flight every week. The first decade – the 1960s – was covered this past week and gave us some interesting talking points: Was Günther Netzer really the John Lennon of football? And should we consider Uwe Seeler the first big icon in Bundesliga history?

Each week in July, Kick off! will be covering a different decade on a journey through the history of professional soccer in Germany. New episodes are broadcast worldwide and online on Tuesdays.

Video content from Kick Off! is now being highlighted on Bundesliga.com – the website of Germany’s professional soccer league. Kick Off! offers a weekly look at the German top-flight – including highlights from the week’s action, interviews with players and coaches and an inside look at the league and its fans. It’s aired onn DW in German, English, Spanish and Arabic – and addressed to soccer fans around the globe.

DW Akademie is once again bringing young journalists together and this time they will be covering soccer. With Once Amigos, 22 young journalists from Latin America and Germany are gearing up for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The innovative project will have them reporting on stories involving this major sporting event. You might think they’re like two international soccer teams: 11 journalists from Germany and 11 from Latin America. But the 22 journalists will in fact be working in mixed pairs during the two-year project.

The first of the project’s five modules was launched in Bonn in early December. After an introductory week with several excursions they practiced hands-on multimedia skills. They’ve since created a Once Amigos blog with the slogan, “Discovering the stories behind the ball – Brazil 2014”.

More than 200 Latin American journalists and numerous German journalists applied for this program financed by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office. The participants will meet up again in June in Brazil. Then at the end of 2013 each team will be researching in the home country of the Latin American teammate. During the World Cup itself, the teams will be reporting from various locations throughout Brazil.

Want to know more about DW Akademie? Here is a list of projects that they are involved in this month.