Tomorrow’s Man: Jurgen Klinsmann

Richard Seamon

In football it’s very easy to become yesterday’s man. You were a reasonable player and then you’re a manager of a top club and everything’s going along pretty well until you have a couple of naff results and the papers start speculating on when Harry Redknapp’s going to be taking over your job (readers of some of my recent offerings may notice a certain motif developing here vis-à-vis the ever available Portsmouth premier). You wait a bit and then the whole circus starts up again, an endless round of trading on past glories and future promise with a few golden handshakes thrown in to keep you in flash motors and permatan.

For some it’s totally different. Brilliant career and then nothing much except relaxing poolside in the sun until you get the call and everything falls neatly into place and you become tomorrow’s man. Jürgen Klinsmann is tomorrow’s man. On 11^th January this year it was announced that on July 1^st he will take over as manager, coach, helmsman or whatever they are called nowadays at FC Bayern München (NB to other writers: it’s Bayern München, not Bayern Munich. The Germans wouldn’t say Sheffield Mittwoch, after all) as successor to Ottmar Hitzfeld, one of the most successful and respected coaches in the world.

There’s plenty of scepticism of course - it’s well founded and not just sour grapes. His modern management style, requiring total freedom and lack of interference from above, is totally at odds with the way Munich has functioned until now. Also his tenacity is unproven; apart from his 5 years at home club current champions VfB Stuttgart in the 80s, he’s never lasted more than 3 years in any one place and he wasn’t exactly Bayern’s most popular player either, despite being a prolific scorer. Many of the players he didn’t get on with are still part of the BM set-up and there were also criticisms that much of Germany’s success under his tenure was down to his assistant, the current manager, Joachim Löw. It took a rather remarkable volte-face from Der Kaiser (Franz Beckenbauer) to admit that Klinsmann was indeed their man as prior to the World Cup there was some bitchy media handbagging going on from the Bayern camp. Klinsmann wasn’t seen as particularly pro-Munich but he had the guts to put up or shut up - demoting Bayern keeper Oliver Kahn to the subs’ bench prior to the World Cup certainly didn’t win him many friends there - and he left a great deal of high-profile faces covered in egg. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that either.

We’re quite familiar with Jürgen the German over in England of course. A regular annoyance to many international defences, including England’s, over his 108 match representative career, he was notorious for being considered a theatrical diver. One of those responsible for disposing of England in the Italia ’90 semis, he nevertheless won over many during his first spell at Spurs in 1994-95. Not only did he turn up at White Hart Lane in his VW Beetle instead of something rather more ostentatious, he responded to the brickbats and the 5.8 scorecards with good grace and much humour. Strike partner Teddy Sheringham told him that if he scored on his debut, the team would honour it with a mass dive. He duly obliged and joined in with the celebration. He was an instant hit and after 21 goals in 41 appearances he was awarded with one of the domestic game’s highest personal accolades, the Football Writers’ Player of the Year.

 

It didn’t keep him in N17 though and he was off to Bavaria after one season, thereby annoying then team owner, Alan Sugar who, in an amazing act of televised hubris, famously crumpled up and threw away the player’s shirt, saying it wasn’t fit to wash his car with. The owner was forced to eat his words when Klinsmann returned to Spurs three years later, on loan from Sampdoria, for a 9 goal, 15 game swansong that enabled them to stave off relegation. It was his final stint with a European club and he announced he would retire after the 1998 World Cup. He moved to California, had a brief dalliance with American soccer and went into the sports marketing business.   

It’s interesting to look back on that spat with Sugar as perhaps being partly responsible for shaping Klinsmann’s management philosophy. Sugar, by his own admission, was not knowledgeable about the game and tried to run a business rather than a football club. It’s virtually impossible to view a football club as a passport to riches, especially one as mercurial as Spurs. Sugar was wealthy but he wasn’t wealthy enough to be able to run a football club without worrying about how much it was costing. And there’s the paradox – start worrying about the pennies and you deny the manager his freedom; have too much cash sloshing about and the club becomes your plaything, thereby eroding the manager’s authority. Klinsmann wants to be completely responsible for all footballing matters at Bayern, with the freedom to do what he wants and to bring in who he needs without fearing dragons breathing down his neck. It’s the only way for him – the job must fit his requirements, not the other way round.

Ever since his early playing days he’s not been afraid to take unusual or innovative steps to give himself the edge. As a 17 year-old he employed a sprint coach, the results of which were evident to every defence he played against as his speed off the blocks was explosive. That approach to self-improvement has never ceased and he’s taught himself several languages over the years- an invaluable skill in the multinational world of modern football. He favours attacking formations and wants to entertain (he probably would have fitted in well at Newcastle). While in charge of Germany he even had his players taught IT skills so he could contact them by email, necessary as he insisted on commuting from his California home. It’s a modern world, why not embrace everything it has to offer?

Whether his success with Germany was a lucky one-off – a combination of a fresh new manager, eager and receptive young charges and the advantage of being at home all inviting success or he really does has that something extra remains to be seen. He’s got two years, which is just about right for him. Personally, I think he’ll succeed but he won’t stay any longer than he needs to. One surprising apparent turn-around though: he won’t tolerate diving and will tell his players that they have a “moral responsibility to stand up afterwards and apologise.”  He really wouldn’t have fitted in at Chelsea.

It’s an unusually long lead in, something we’re not really used to in England where resignations are usually rather more immediate. Bayern are in the last 32 of the UEFA Cup, a poor substitute for missing out on a perennial Champions’ League campaign and while still riding high in the Bundesliga, they’re making unusually hard work of it. Hitzfeld, in his second stretch with die Roten, decided during the mid-season break that he wasn’t going to renew his contract at the end of the season, giving the club the luxury of plenty of time for a detailed search to commence.

They didn’t need it. It looks fairly certain that the club hierarchy of Beckenbauer, Höness and Rumenigge already had Klinsmann in their sights, ever since the former Bayern player had, only a few months previously, expressed a desire to have a second stab at the management game. His only previous go being of course, the particularly stunning achievement of taking the German national side to 3rd place in the 2006 World Cup. It was a “heads up” for the world of football because when he took over in 2004, completely untried and untested, they were rank outsiders at best and anyone capable of transforming a largely young and inexperienced team into 3rd best in the world deserves serious consideration. 

Since Klinsmann announced that he was interested in managing again he’s been linked with almost every high-profile job going, most notably that of Mourinho’s replacement at Chelsea. He wasn’t interested, and it wasn’t a question of money either (although the Bayern job is said to be worth €5M a year). He’s highly principled and won’t be bought or be anyone’s yes-man. When asked about future appointments in an interview with the Times Online last year he said, without naming names, “You want to work with the right people at the right place for the right purpose. It is not hard to turn things down if people don’t share the same perspective, ambition, philosophy.”