The market is really slow this season.

Many quality players are still available and looking for a new job. It is especially remarkable that among those players who are interesting for the german league, many (former) nationalplayers still got no team for the 2009/2010 campaign!

Today Alba Berlin announced the departure of Johannes Herber. The 26-year old german is joining a group of players who spend or spent their summers as Dirk Nowitzkis teammates.

You could almost form a whole team of (former) german nationalplayers, who are still looking for a new job.

Mithat Demirel, Misan Nikagbatse, Konrad Wysocki, Demond Greene, Yassin Idbihi, Guido Grünheid, Steven Arigbabu, Ademola Okulaja, Patrick Femerling, Sven Schultze, Tim Ohlbrecht and now Johannes Herber are currently free agents. That’s a decent 12-man roster, but one should highly doubt to see them all play together for one team.

Since the upcoming 2009/2010 season all BBL clubs need to have four german players on their roster. Naturally this should make german players very coveted, what is coveted becomes from a supply and demand perspective expensive. And what is expensive is often not affordable or lucrative enough compared to other solutions. Rumours say that some Americans earn about one third of the salary a german nationalplayer gets.

It seems bizarre that a regulation that should protect german players results in a way that those players are ignored by many clubs. With Philip Zwiener extending his contract with Berlin, Heiko Schaffartzik signing with Braunschweig and ratiopharm Ulm inking Robin Benzing only three nationalplayers were hired by german clubs so far.

Right now it looks like the new regulation and the aim of protecting german players results counterproductive. Hopefully the agents and the players will rethink their salary demands and clubs comprehend that most of the fans can identify more with a german national player wearing the club’s uniform than american players who come and go.