GER - Coach Bauermann wants quota for foreigners in German League

BERLIN (BBL) - The coach of the German national team, Dirk Bauermann, is in favour of a bigger quota for German players in the German League (BBL).
 
Bauermann, who was coaching for many years in the German league, wants a minimum of 50% of the players of each club to be German nationals: “In my opinion it would be ideal if out of the 12 players on the score sheet, six would be Germans”, he said in an interview with the German newspaper ‘Berliner Morgenpost’.
 
Currently, the rule of the BBL only requires only 1 player on the score sheet to be a German citizen.
 
Bauermann is also in favour of a limitation of foreign players per club. “A maximum of six foreigners in the BBL”, he said and added: “We have to get away from the thinking that everybody can play better basketball than us Germans. That is not correct. Let the youngsters play and they will prove it on the court.”
 
He also sees a deficit in promoting more German top coaches. “The BBL is the only top league in Europe where only very few local coaches are active. Why? There are enough high quality German coaches available in our country.”
 
Bauermann is still hopeful that he can count on his superstar Dirk Nowitzki during the upcoming EuroBasket in Poland: “Nothing is decided yet, the EuroBasket is quite late and the season in the US is over since a long time. For the development of the younger players it would be tremendously important if he could play with them. I am optimistic that we get this done.”