Germany's World Cup final victory is reward for a development which began more than a decade ago. Nearly all the players in the side which defeated Argentina 1-0 in the Maracana stadium were also on the field in Cape Town four years ago in South Africa in a 4-0 quarter-final defeat of the South Americans. Many have grown up together and played for Germany's youth teams after the federation decided in 2000 on an overhaul of its programmes for developing young talent.
Keeper Manuel Neuer, captain Philipp Lahm, Per Mertesacker, Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira, Toni Kroos, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Mueller, Mesut Oezil, Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose all featured at some point during the 4-0 win over Argentina in 2010 when Germany were the second youngest squad in the tournament. In 2006, when Germany defeated Argentina on penalties in the quarter-finals in Berlin, Lahm, Podolski, Schweinsteiger, Mertesacker and Klose were on the pitch. More experienced and mature, the golden generation has now brought the German federation the rewards for its work.
Coach Joachim Loew deserves much praise for the calm way he has nurtured the talented group and introduced many others since taking charge after the 2006 World Cup, when he was assistant to Juergen Klinsmann. But 54-year-old Loew is also reaping the benefits of a systematic and extensive youth programme which began after the 2000 European Championships in Belgium and the Netherlands, when an ageing Germany side went out in the group stage and the future looked bleak.
The German football federation DFB decided to make scouting and fostering new talent a priority in a programme which was further developed when former captain Matthias Sammer - now Bayern Munich sports director - was appointed sports director in 2005. Germany were Under-19 European champions in 2008, and then won the Under-17 and Under-21 European titles in 2009. Before that, Germany had gone 16 years without a European title at junior level.
Six players who won the under-21 European Championships in 2009 appeared against Argentina a year later. And Sunday's line-up in the Maracana also featured six players from that Under-21 side which beat England 4-1 in the 2009 final: Neuer, Benedikt Hoewedes, Boateng, Hummels, Khedira (who was injured in the warm-up Sunday) and Oezil. As a comparison, of the England squad in Brazil only James Milner survives from that final, although Theo Walcott may have featured in Brazil but for injury.
Continuity has been a key with other players. Lahm, Podolski, Schweinsteiger and Mertesacker all made their international debuts in 2004, have have more than 100 caps each and have been virtually ever-present under Loew. "Anyone who thinks we have just reached the end of the road is wrong. We are now just at the beginning of a very positive development," Sammer had said prophetically in 2010. Loew has repeated those comments in Brazil, the coach pointing to more young players coming through such as Sunday's match winner Mario Goetze, the 22-year-old Bayern Munich midfielder he described as a "boy wonder," or players such as Marco Reus and Ilkay Guendogan who would have been in his Brazil squad but for injuries.
"We have players right now who are playing at their peak, but we have young players also in the squad and others who aren't even here," Loew said. "We can play on top of the world for a good few years yet, with some young players coming in to reinforce the team." Nearly all the young players in the current squad are the product of the DFB's youth programmes. The one exception is elder statesman Miroslav Klose, at 36 Germany's second-most capped player after Lothar Matthaeus. Klose is now the exception which proves the rule: his career path belongs to the old days.
After arriving in Germany with his family from Poland as an eight-year-old, Klose played for a local side, SG Blaubach-Diedelkopf, in lower leagues before signing for FC 08 Homburg, a former Bundesliga team, at the relatively late age of 20. He was already 22 when he began his first full Bundesliga season for Kaiserslautern, and could quite easily have been lost, or ended up played for Poland, who had shown an interest.
Now players now come through the country's centres of excellence and talent-spotting programmes and are rarely missed. Since 2001 all first division sides and from 2002 all second division sides have had to have their own so-called performance centres as a requirement for receiving a playing licence.
"The Bundesliga has a huge influence on the team because of the training of the young players," Loew said after joining Sepp Herberger (1954), Helmut Schoen (1974) and Franz Beckenbauer (1990) as the nation's World Cup-winning coaches. "In 2000, 2004 German football was pretty much down and we took decisive steps then, and invested more in youth development. Just having German virtues was not enough because all the countries have them. We had to improve technically and be better on the pitch.
"The performance centre and centres of excellent have been an important part of this. This is a product of the excellent training and education in Germany." The junior titles several years ago were the first logical product of the youth schemes. All that had been missing was a first senior international title since the European Championship trophy won by the Germany team featuring Sammer in 1996. Now Germany are world champions, and look like they could be at the top for some time to come.