OBESITY is a common scourge among retired footballers. Consumption of high-calorie foods, alcohol and an undisciplined lifestyle often weigh down former players.

This is not true with Karl-Heinz Riedle. Standing nearly 180 centimeters tall, with veins bulging from his forearms, the 51-year-old former German center-forward has the look of a 30-something body builder.

The day I met him at the Banyan Tree Hotel along the Bund in Shanghai, he was wearing a black-and-yellow Puma T-shirt, with a BVB09 insignia indicating his current affiliation: He is now official international ambassador of the Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund, also known as BVB.

Over the course of his career, Riedle played in Bundesliga, English Premier League (EPL) and Italian Serie A. But it was his four years with Dortmund that Riedle looks back to with the most fondness and nostalgia.

After joining the German club from Serie A side Lazio in 1993, Riedle helped it clinch its first UEFA Champions League trophy in 1997, as well as two German league titles in 1995 and 1996.

“I had a good run there, scoring a lot of goals,” Riedle smiled as he sipped his espresso.

The purpose of his recent visit to Shanghai, as he explained in our interview, was to help promote the Dortmund club and brand, as well as to create buzz for the upcoming International Champions Cup (ICC) tournament, which the Bundesliga side will be playing in for the first time.

Riedle’s job also involves reaching out to BVB fans in countries he visits. During his two-day sojourn in Shanghai, the once prolific striker met a few local Dortmund fans and wowed them with his signature header skills in a few games. During his career, he was nicknamed “Air” due to his notable header accuracy.

“When the team comes in July, we will not just get in touch with the local fans, but tap into the wider fan community,” Riedle said.

The club plans to do so by organizing two public training sessions before their game with Manchester United on July 22. The former legendary German striker stressed that it’s part of the philosophy of German football clubs to be close to fans. Dortmund is remarkable in this respect as its supporters are famed for their loyalty and enthusiasm. This is manifested by the rabid fans who pack its home stadium, Signal Iduna Park, to cheer the team in good times and bad with their rendition of the song “You Will Never Walk Alone.”

Indeed, thanks to Dortmund’s strong performance during the recent UEFA Champions League tournaments and domestic leagues, their fans have been dramatically increasing in number in China. It’s hard to believe that this globally celebrated club almost went bankrupt about a decade ago.

Sustainable approach

According to PR pamphlets offered by club officials, Dortmund’s successes in the 1990s left the club out of touch with reality. Along the way, it lost all sense of perspective and racked up debts of more than 180 million euros (US$200 million).

The club survived the crisis by implementing a change of guard in top management and pushing through a series of drastic cost-cutting reforms. The result was that it narrowly staved off the threat of bankruptcy “at the last minute” in 2005. “From there the new story of Borussia Dortmund began,” said Riedle.

He told Shanghai Daily that those behind the turnaround include newly installed CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke and director Michael Zorc, who exercise financial prudence by always trying to break even and abstaining from buying players the club cannot afford. “It’s a very sustainable approach, what they are doing,” Riedle told Shanghai Daily.

This near-death experience has since drilled a keen sense of financial discipline into the club’s day-to-day operations. Dortmund has no debts; rather, it went from piling up record debts to raking in 276 million euros in sales revenues and more than 5.5 million euros in annual net profits in the 2014/2015 season, the last period for which statistics are available. This concept of sustainable development is espoused by a lot of Bundesliga clubs, and sets them apart from their counterparts in the EPL, where skyrocketing broadcasting rights fees have left each club flush with cash, capable of buying the top-class players in the market.

And as someone who played for EPL sides Liverpool and Fulham, Riedle was a front-row witness to the flourishing of the EPL in terms of its international recognition. When he joined Liverpool, Riedle was already 32 and considered to be in the twilight of his career. Therefore he was irregularly used, and his role was more like a mentor coaching up-and-coming strikers like Robbie Fowler.

In his time the EPL was arguably the best league in the world, because the game was much quicker and overseas commercial expansion started early. EPL is one of the first leagues to enter the Asian market, around 15 years ago. That effectively established its leader status in Asia.

But the rise of the Bundesliga has, in his words, challenged that status. German clubs with a top four finish are fixtures in recent Champions League (CL) tournaments, which is big progress considering that CL football was the privilege of three German clubs a few years ago.

“Maybe the Bundesliga is the best league from the club side, in the sense that all the clubs are financially healthy. They are not allowed to spend beyond their means,” said Riedle.

In fact, the ascent of Bundesliga and German football as a whole owes much to the huge success of German youth training.

Youth academies are a response to a frustrating spell during the UEFA EURO 2000 tournament, where Germany played “miserably,” and its players were widely ridiculed for their tactical and technical coarseness. German football has since been thrust into a trajectory toward rebirth, or “Das Reboot.”

“Das Reboot” also happens to be the title of a bestseller authored by German football expert and Guardian reporter Raphael Honigstein, who chronicles German football’s return to dominance. Central to this miracle is the role youth academies play in scouting and nurturing homegrown talent.

“It sank in (after the EURO 2000 fiasco) that every Bundesliga club needed to have a very good academy. So it all started 16 years ago, and now we’ve seen the profits of it,” Riedle noted.

Although Germany was a multiple-time winner of European championships and World Cups, for a long time “the world had been moaning about how the Germans played.” Riedle hasn’t read Honigstein’s book, but he proudly claimed that “nobody can say anything any more, because the quality of Germany’s game has improved, stylistically, tactically and technically.”

Role model

Of all the German youth academies, Dortmund’s has been a role model from the start, in terms of the caliber of its graduates. Overseen now by Lars Rieken, another club legend, its youth academy claims star players such as Marco Reus, Mario Goetze and Mats Hummels among some of its best alumni. Many Chinese fans are naturally calling for BVB to open football schools in China to help train young footballers.

This is in fact part of Dortmund’s strategy in China. Apart from reaching out to fans and building up its presence, another goal is to speak to local clubs about the possibility of cooperation on youth academy projects. Riedle disclosed that this could happen during the ICC tournament this summer.

Chinese football is experiencing a tremendous bullish run these days, with billionaire club owners shelling out cash to sign world-class players. Although this spending binge helped to temporarily restore some credibility and vitality to Chinese soccer, it has also come under fire as critics argue this is not a sustainable recipe for success. This is when names like Dortmund are often mentioned, and their rich experience in youth training is eagerly sought-after.

After all, Dortmund’s financial recovery was achieved without capital injections from sheiks, Russian oligarchs or corporations. Underpinning its turnaround is mainly the fact that it found the right formula for continued success: scouting young players who represent the future, as well as buying low and selling high.

This may be the kind of system that many are looking for in China. “But they must have patience, because this program will not immediately make you a top team in two to three years,” Riedle said.

He added that just as it took Germany 16 years to return to its dominant position in world soccer, youth training in China will similarly be a long-term process to bring out the potential of young players.