EXACTLY FOUR MONTHS AND TWO days ago, German football seemed to have reached its highest point since the summer of 1990, when Franz Beckenbauer remarked famously that his country, already world champions, would become unstoppable after reunification with the East.

They had put on one of the best World Cups in recent history, they boasted the best football grounds in Europe (and they were always full) and Jürgen Klinsmann’s up-and-comers were in the World Cup semi-finals, having just knocked out Argentina, most people’s favourites.

It was supposed to be a new dawn. Instead, it was a false dawn. And only now is it becoming clear just how deep into the night German football has wandered.

Germany lost that semi-final, of course. Perhaps things would have been different if Klinsmann’s troops had been crowned world champions. Either way, it’s worth noting just how far the country has plummeted as a footballing power.

The Bundesliga sits fifth in the all-important Uefa country ranking, which determines the number of clubs a league can enter into the Champions League and Uefa Cup. The country ranking is based on a formula that takes into account the aggregate European results of a league over the past five seasons. Germany are perilously perched half a point ahead of Portugal and less than two points ahead of Romania. Theoretically, leagues in the Netherlands and Russia could overtake the Bundesliga this season, as well. Even if only two from the four leagues in the “chasing pack” pull ahead of Germany, the effect would be disastrous. The Bundesliga would be guaranteed only one place in the Champions League proper, plus another via the qualifying rounds. With two entrants it would be on a par with the likes of Ukraine, Bulgaria and Scotland.

Yet perhaps these results are not so surprising when one considers that in Uefa’s ranking of individual teams (also based on the past five years), Bayern Munich, the highest-ranked German side, sit in seventeenth place, behind — among others — Newcastle United, Villarreal, AS Roma and PSV Eindhoven. There are four German clubs in Uefa’s top 50; England has four in the top ten alone.

Footballing powers have ups and downs, of course, but Germany’s decline remains hard to explain. After all, this is Europe’s biggest country, boasting the biggest economy, as well as a per capita income that puts the Continent’s other large nations to shame.

It has the infrastructure and cultural conditions that ought to enable the sport to thrive: a long and glorious history, outstanding facilities at both professional and youth level and a genuine interest in the game. Indeed, in the latter category, the Germans are in a league of their own. The Bundesliga has far and away the highest average attendance in Europe, some 15 percentage points higher than the Barclays Premiership, despite the increased capacity this season at Old Trafford and the Emirates Stadium. Furthermore, its second division is also the top-ranked in Europe, some 10 per cent ahead of the Coca-Cola Championship.

It can count on fertile social conditions, as well. Germany is located at the centre of Europe and, unlike some other insular cultures one might name, it has been quick to absorb and adapt to foreign influences, particularly in football. And it has a large and diverse immigrant population that — as France showed a few years ago — can provide the manpower to create a footballing powerhouse.

Throw in the fact that Italian club football is financially moribund (not to mention its other, more serious, self-inflicted wounds) and that Le Championnat in France is seemingly unable to hang on to the talented footballers it produces and one might have thought that this would be an optimal time for Germany to challenge La Liga and the Premiership. Instead, the situation seemingly continues to degenerate.

Germans have questioned themselves long and hard, trying to find the reasons behind their footballing decline. Post-Bosman the blame was initially laid at the feet of foreigners, particularly cheap ones from impoverished Eastern neighbours. Leaving aside that Germany gleefully naturalised the better ones — Lukas Podolski, Miroslav Klose, et al — the argument proved to be flawed: England, Spain and Italy had as many, if not more, foreign imports and yet they continue to produce quality footballers.

The second theory, that German clubs are set up as “not-for-profit” social entities and, as such, cannot benefit from a stock market float or profligate owners such as Roman Abramovich or Massimo Moratti, which, in turn, means they cannot compete financially, makes somewhat more sense. And it’s true that it is stricter financial oversight in Germany that makes it more difficult for clubs to engage in “creative accounting” or run up hundreds of millions of euros of debt.

But this factor alone cannot explain the malaise. Even if German clubs cannot pay Premiership or La Liga wages, it doesn’t explain why Germany stopped producing the kind of players foreign clubs want to buy. If Germany were like France — that is, a league where teams cannot pay high wages but where they still produce good footballers — Michael Ballack, Robert Huth and Jens Lehmann would not be the only members of Klinsmann’s Word Cup squad plying their trade abroad.

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