Germany’s youth policy paid off as they became world champions for the fourth time.<\/p>\n
Six of their World Cup-winning squad played in the side which beat England 4-0 in the 2009 European Championship Under-21s final.<\/p>\n
James Milner was the only England player from that game to play at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.<\/p>\n
The Germans beat Argentina 1-0 in Sunday’s final, while England went out of the competition in the group stages.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, defenders Mats Hummels, Benedikt Howedes and Jerome Boateng and midfielders Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil started against England in the youth final.<\/p>\n
Only the injured Khedira did not start against Argentina.<\/p>\n
Since that final in Malmo five years ago, Ozil won La Liga with Real Madrid before making a \u00a342.4m move to Arsenal last September.<\/p>\n
His title-winning team-mate at Real was Khedira, who also helped the Spanish giants to the 2013-14 Champions League title.<\/p>\n
Neuer, 28, and Boateng both play for Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich, while Hummels is a two-times Bundesliga winner with Borussia Dortmund. Howedes, 26, plays for Schalke.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
BBC Sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Germany’s youth policy paid off as they became world champions for the fourth time. Six of their World Cup-winning squad played in the side which beat England 4-0 in the 2009 European Championship Under-21s final. James Milner was the only England player from that game to play at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":31743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[115,122,161,29,3],"class_list":["post-31739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-armyworms","tag-bokpin","tag-catalan-referendum","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}