Eric Wynalda’s sparkling summer has been followed by an autumn of discontent.
Eric Wynalda scored three goals at last summer’s Copa America, helping the U.S. to a fourth-place finish. Since returning to his German club, VfL Bochum, the 26-year-old’s fortunes have soured.
He has yet to see action this season. After undergoing a hernia operation Aug. 30, VfL Bochum suspended Wynalda for comments he made in the tabloid Bild. He is currently training on his own and waiting for offers from other clubs.
“Eric Wynalda is immediately suspended from training and game play until further notice,” coach Klaus Toppmoeller announced after the tabloid interview in which Wynalda harshly criticized his club.
“I said that the team didn’t care about me and my injury and some comments were misunderstood,” Wynalda told Soccer America.
Wynalda had complained to the tabloid reporter that maybe Bochum general manager Klaus Hilpert doesn’t know his job.
The tabloid printed that Bochum didn’t care about Wynalda, even forcing him to seek medical care for his hernia operation on his own. But Wynalda said he merely stated that he had to do his own paperwork for the operation due to U.S. insurance, and that he had to make his own press release on the operation.
This brought about a angry denial from club physician Joachim Schubert: “First of all, Wynalda returned from the South American championships injured; secondly he arrived back from the States six days late. Besides, he never sought medical attention in either South or North America.”
Wynalda feels that he has been lied to by Schubert, Hilpert, and Toppmoeller.
“Dr. Schubert told me that I only had a minor muscle pull and nothing was wrong with me,” he said. “I then went to Toppmoeller because I could feel that there was something wrong. He said that there’s nothing wrong with me — in other words that I was lying. I couldn’t believe it.
“Finally Toppmoeller told me to go to a doctor in Duesseldorf and whatever he said the club would do.”
In nearby Duesseldorf, Dr. Brent Restel saw that Wynalda had a 3 1/2 centimeter break in his stomach lining and needed immediate surgery. The club sent him straight to Munich for the operation.
Upon his return, Wynalda confronted his team doctor.
“He told me that he knew that I had this problem the whole time,” Wynalda said. “He didn’t want to lie to me, but Hilpert put him under pressure to get me to play. Everybody was lying to me. Hilpert said that we were starting over again with a hard-working, honest relationship. I told the reporter that he might be hard-working, but he is anything but honest. That’s what got me suspended.”
An angry Hilpert responded: “I can’t believe his bottomless impertinence, we did everything we could to build golden bridges for him. If he brings us any club that will pay a halfway decent transfer fee, he’s free to go.”
To the MLS?
But Wynalda claims that Bochum has in fact raised the price of his transfer and even wants 50 percent of a future transfer should his new club sell him. He believes that Hilpert thinks that Wynalda is in cahoots with the U.S. Soccer to lower his value so he can sign with them and then loan him out to another club for a big profit.
“Hilpert thinks I’m trying to help the U.S. Federation make money by turning me around for $2 million,” he said. “They think I’m playing games with them, but they’re playing games with me.”
Hilpert said, “We knew he wanted to leave the whole time, but we have never misled him in any way.”
Wynalda has had a long conversation with Toppmoeller, but knows that there’s little he can do.
“He’s been fired for standing up for a player before,” he said referring to the time that Eintracht Frankfurt fired Toppmoeller for supporting goalkeeper Uli Stein after Stein made racial remarks toward fellow teammates.
The tabloid papers have been all over Wynalda since the suspension was announced. “Bild Zeitung‘s headline today was ‘Ami Go Home,’ but I can handle the bad press,” Wynalda said. “I know the truth and enough people know what’s really going on. This won’t affect my reputation.”
Wynalda is under contract at Bochum until June 30, 1996, but even then the club would be entitled to a transfer fee. He is hoping that an English club will want him on loan or that he might get picked up by an Italian team when the transfer period reopens there during the first two weeks of November.
“No matter what, I’m going to play in the MLS,” he said. “They have the money to do this.”
This wasn’t the first time his comments to the German press have landed him in hot water with his club.
During his five-month rehabilitation from a broken ankle, he criticized teammates in a TV interview from California that was broadcast in Germany. So upon his return, he had to cope with a painful injury and tension within the team.
Once back on the field, Wynalda struggled with his injury — the result of a nasty foul in November of 1994 that required the insertion of screws and a plate — and Bochum floundered. It was relegated to the Second Division and Wynalda finished the year without a goal in 22 games.
He had arrived in Bochum after two season with Saarbruecken. He had attained star status in his first year, reeling off eight goals in the first half of the season but scoring only once in the second half. Saarbruecken was relegated to the Second Division, where Wynalda scored 12 in the 1993-94 season. For a transfer fee of $900,000, he joined Bochum, which was also relegated after one year in the First Division.
by Soccer America correspondent Jerry Hawkins