Jürgen Klinsmann

• 1. Introduction

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  Jürgen Klinsmann scored sixteen goals in a single football match at the age of eight. He was playing for an amateur club in the small town of Gingen an der Fils. Football was still years away from becoming his profession.

  That boy from Baden-Württemberg would eventually lift a World Cup with West Germany. He would terrorize defenses in Italy and England, then take over national coaching jobs on three different continents. What carried him from a small amateur pitch to a place among the 125 greatest living footballers, as FIFA would later name him? And what made him just as unpredictable, and at times controversial, once he moved from playing to coaching?

• 2. A Striker's Signature

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  In the 1987-88 season, Klinsmann scored nineteen goals for VfB Stuttgart, including an overhead kick against Bayern Munich that fans still talk about. That tally made him the Bundesliga's top goalscorer, and at twenty-four he was named German Footballer of the Year. A year later he left for Italy, joining Inter Milan on a three-year contract alongside fellow German internationals Lothar Matthäus and Andreas Brehme.

  Head coach Giovanni Trapattoni ran a heavily defensive system at Inter, yet Klinsmann still scored thirteen goals as the club finished third in Serie A. He learned Italian well enough to win over the Nerazzurri's fans. The following season he added fourteen more goals and helped Inter win the UEFA Cup, 2-1 on aggregate against Roma. A disastrous 1991-92 campaign followed. Inter finished eighth, Klinsmann managed only seven goals, and he knew it would be his last season at the San Siro.

  Monaco offered a fresh start in 1992, and Klinsmann immediately pushed the French club to a second-place league finish in his first season. Marseille's bribery scandal removed them from the following year's UEFA Champions League. Monaco took their place instead, reaching the semi-final before losing to eventual champions Milan. By his final Monaco season, a torn ligament had cost him two months. In 1994 he left the club early, with a year still left on his contract.

  Back at Bayern Munich for the 1995-96 season, Klinsmann became the club's top scorer. He also set a UEFA Cup scoring record of fifteen goals in twelve matches, a mark that held until 2011. The following year he added the Bundesliga title itself, before a brief detour to Sampdoria and a return to Tottenham Hotspur for the 1997-98 season. His goals kept Spurs out of relegation that year, most memorably four of them in a 6-2 win at Wimbledon. He played his final high-level match that season, on the last day of the Premier League against Southampton.

  After retiring, he moved to the United States. In 2003 he turned out for Orange County Blue Star, an amateur side in the fourth-tier Premier Development League.

• 3. Conquering England

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  Tottenham Hotspur signed Klinsmann from Monaco in July 1994 for £2 million, and English fans were not impressed. He arrived with a reputation as a diver, and both supporters and the press were openly critical before he had played a match.

  On his debut against Sheffield Wednesday, Klinsmann scored the winning goal with a header. He celebrated by diving to the ground himself, mocking his own reputation, and the gesture won fans over instantly. A Guardian journalist had written a piece titled 'Why I Hate Jürgen Klinsmann.' Two months later, the same writer published 'Why I Love Jürgen Klinsmann.'

  More than 150,000 Klinsmann shirts sold in England that season, driven by his humor and his combative style on the pitch. He was inducted into Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and he won the 1995 Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year award.

  Klinsmann scored twenty goals in the league that season and twenty-nine across all competitions, including a late winner against Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter-final. He also scored in the semi-final, but Spurs lost 4-1 to Everton and missed out on the final entirely.

• 4. World Cup Glory and Scars

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  Klinsmann made his debut for the West German national team on the 12th of December 1987, in a 1-1 friendly draw against Brazil. Three years later he became a World Cup winner, but the tournament nearly went differently in the round of 16 against the Netherlands, a team West Germany had lost to at Euro 1988.

  Rudi Völler was sent off in the 22nd minute of that match, forcing Klinsmann into a lone-striker role. He scored the opening goal himself. The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that no German forward in a decade had offered such a brilliant, almost perfect performance. West Germany went on to beat Czechoslovakia 1-0 and edge England 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw.

  In the final against Argentina, West Germany won 1-0, and Klinsmann was fouled by Argentine defender Pedro Monzón, who was sent off for the challenge. Critics called the incident a case of Klinsmann diving, a claim he disputed. In a 2004 interview, he said the foul had left a 15 centimetre gash on his shin.

  Klinsmann scored in all six major tournaments he played for Germany, from Euro 1988 through the 1998 World Cup. Croatia eliminated the team in the quarter-finals that year. In 2016 he became the fifth player named an honorary captain of Germany. That honor would sit oddly with the reception awaiting him once he moved into coaching.

• 5. Rebuilding Germany

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  Klinsmann took over the German national team on the 26th of July 2004, succeeding his former strike partner Rudi Völler. He brought in fellow striker Oliver Bierhoff to handle public relations, freeing himself to focus purely on coaching, and launched a youth movement to refresh a squad still reeling from a poor Euro 2004.

  Italy beat Germany 4-1 in one of several results that drew criticism ahead of the 2006 World Cup. Commentators and the tabloid Bild attacked Klinsmann for commuting to Germany from his home in the United States. Klinsmann had already stripped Bild of longstanding privileges, including advance access to the team lineup and round-the-clock contact with players.

  During the 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup, Klinsmann rotated his goalkeepers regardless of form, angering Bayern Munich's Oliver Kahn. On the 7th of April 2006, he relegated Kahn to the bench and named Arsenal's Jens Lehmann his first choice. He pointed to Lehmann's run to that season's Champions League final as justification.

  Germany opened the 2006 World Cup with three straight wins, over Costa Rica, Poland and Ecuador, topping Group A. Fans still sang an old English taunt, 'Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Jurgen Klinsmann?' A 2-0 win over Sweden followed, then a penalty shootout victory over Argentina in the quarter-final. Miroslav Klose had equalized in the 80th minute before the shootout decided it.

  Italy eliminated Germany in the semi-final on the 4th of July. Fabio Grosso and Alessandro Del Piero scored twice in the final minutes of extra time. Klinsmann's team recovered to beat Portugal 3-1 in the third-place match, fielding Kahn instead of Lehmann. The squad was met with a parade through Berlin the next day.

  Franz Beckenbauer, once one of Klinsmann's sharpest critics, publicly urged him to stay on as coach. Klinsmann also received Germany's Bundesverdienstkreuz for his work with the team. He turned down a new contract anyway. On the 11th of July 2006, he told the German Football Association he wanted, in his words, 'to go back to leading a normal life' with his family. His assistant Joachim Löw was named the new head coach at that same press conference.

• 6. Bayern's Buddha Statues

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  Bayern Munich announced in January 2008 that Klinsmann would replace Ottmar Hitzfeld as coach that July. Once in charge, he overhauled the training ground and installed Buddha statues meant to change the club's culture. The statues drew media mockery and were quickly removed.

  A 5-2 home defeat to Werder Bremen in September put Klinsmann under early pressure. By October, a 3-3 draw with VfL Bochum left Bayern in 11th place in the Bundesliga. Some fans began chanting for him to be sacked.

  Bayern still reached the Champions League quarter-final, beating Sporting CP 12-1 on aggregate in the first knockout round, a competition record. They then lost the first leg of their quarter-final 4-0 to eventual champions Barcelona. Franz Beckenbauer called it the most dreadful performance he had ever seen from a Bayern team. In that same week, Bayern also lost 5-1 to Felix Magath's Wolfsburg.

  Klinsmann was sacked on the 27th of April 2009, with five matches left in the season and Bayern sitting in third place. His final match in charge ended in a 1-0 loss to Schalke 04. He closed his Bayern tenure with a record of 25 wins, nine draws, and 10 losses across all competitions.

  Team captain Phillip Lahm later wrote in his autobiography that Klinsmann's tenure was a 'failure.' He claimed Klinsmann's lack of tactical instruction forced players to plan strategy among themselves before kickoff. Even so, some of the changes Klinsmann made at Bayern have since been credited with helping the club's later success.

• 7. An American Reinvention

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  Klinsmann's first paid role in North America came in November 2010, as a technical consultant for Toronto FC of Major League Soccer. He advised the club on an overhaul of its coaching staff. On the 29th of July 2011, he was named the 35th head coach of the United States national team, replacing Bob Bradley. Bradley had been fired after a 4-2 loss to Mexico in the CONCACAF Gold Cup final.

  Results were rocky at first, with four losses and a draw before the U.S. beat Slovenia to close out 2011. On the 29th of February 2012, Klinsmann's team recorded its first ever win against Italy, 1-0, away from home. That August, the U.S. beat Mexico 1-0 at the Estadio Azteca, its first ever victory in that stadium.

  In 2013, Klinsmann coached the U.S. past Germany, his own country, 4-3 in a centennial celebration match on the 2nd of June. Weeks later, on the 28th of July, he led the team to its fifth CONCACAF Gold Cup title, beating Panama 1-0 in the final. A 2-0 win over Mexico that September secured the team's place at the 2014 World Cup.

  Ahead of the 2014 tournament, Klinsmann picked five so-called 'Jurgen Americans': players with American serviceman fathers and German mothers, all born and trained in Germany. He cut Landon Donovan, the country's all-time leading scorer, calling it 'the most difficult decision of his coaching career.' His son Jonathan then mocked Donovan on Twitter, fueling speculation that the decision was personal.

  At the World Cup itself, the U.S. opened with a 2-1 win over Ghana, secured by an 86th-minute header from substitute John Brooks. A 2-2 draw with Portugal followed. Cristiano Ronaldo's stoppage-time cross let Silvestre Varela head in a late equalizer. A 1-0 loss to Germany then sent the U.S. through to the round of 16 anyway, after Portugal beat Ghana in the final group match.

  Goalkeeper Tim Howard set a World Cup record for saves as the U.S. held Belgium scoreless through 90 minutes in the round of 16. Belgium then scored twice in extra time. Substitute Julian Green volleyed in a goal in the 107th minute, but the U.S. could not find an equalizer and was eliminated.

  Klinsmann's U.S. side opened the next World Cup cycle with a first-ever win over the Czech Republic. In 2015, the team beat the Netherlands 4-3 in Amsterdam. The team's form soured after that, finishing fourth at the 2015 Gold Cup, its worst showing in the competition since 2000.

  The U.S. lost 2-1 at home to Mexico and 4-0 away to Costa Rica in November 2016. Those results left the team at the bottom of the final World Cup qualifying table. The U.S. Soccer Federation fired Klinsmann on the 21st of November 2016, replacing him with Bruce Arena. The team went on to miss the 2018 World Cup entirely.

• 8. Charity, Family, and Controversy

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  In 1995, Klinsmann and several close friends founded Agapedia, a children's charity whose Greek-derived name translates to 'Love for Children.' Two years later, as captain of the German national team, he visited the Holocaust memorial site Yad Vashem in Israel alongside coach Berti Vogts. The visit was televised around the world.

  Klinsmann's farewell match in May 1999 sold out Stuttgart's Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, drawing 54,000 fans and guests including Bryan Adams and Boris Becker. He donated the proceeds, more than a million U.S. dollars, to children's charities. He is also a board member of Für die Zukunft lernen, a German initiative supporting Holocaust education for young people.

  Klinsmann was born in Göppingen on the 30th of July 1964. His family later moved to Stuttgart, where they ran a bakery in the Botnang district. Locals still call him the 'baker's son from Botnang.' He married Debbie Chin, an American former model of Chinese descent, proposing to her in 1995 and marrying that same year in Milan. The couple settled in Huntington Beach, California. Their son Jonathan later played goalkeeper for the United States U-20 team.

  Away from coaching, Klinsmann built a second career as a television pundit, working World Cups for ESPN and BBC Sport and joining ESPN FC from 2021. He returned to club management briefly in November 2019, at Hertha BSC. He announced his resignation over Facebook after just ten weeks, and investor Lars Windhorst later called the manner of his departure 'unacceptable.'

  South Korea hired Klinsmann as head coach on the 27th of February 2023, on a contract meant to run through the 2026 World Cup. Fans criticized his long absences from the country and his squad selections well before the 2023 AFC Asian Cup. There, South Korea limped through the group stage with a single win against Bahrain and draws against Jordan and Malaysia.

  Jordan eliminated South Korea 2-0 in the semi-final on the 7th of February. The Korea Football Association fired Klinsmann on the 16th of February, citing a 'failure to demonstrate leadership.' Months earlier, in November 2022, Klinsmann had told BBC that Iran used 'dirty tactics' against referee Mario Escobar. Iran's coach, Carlos Queiroz, responded by petitioning FIFA to remove Klinsmann from its Qatar World Cup technical panel.

  In April 2023, Klinsmann was one of just 22 personal guests at a ceremony in Berlin's Schloss Bellevue. There, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded former Chancellor Angela Merkel the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for special achievement.