By Mike Woitalla
Executive Editor, Soccer America Magazine
Juergen Klinsmann's revolutionary approach to resurrecting a fallen power has its detractors.
Not long after Juergen Klinsmann became a soccer star, he visited a juvenile prison in the central German town of Adelsheim.
''Why they were locked up was of no interest to me,'' Klinsmann explains in a biography by Hans Blickensdoerfer, ''but I saw that if they had grown up in a better social environment, they would not have been there in the first place.''
Klinsmann said the experience did him ''more good than a dozen autograph-signing sessions.''
But German newspaper Bild Am Sonntag splashed a headline on its tabloid pages that read, ''Klinsmann lobbies for Murderers.''
It was an early example of what would be a long series of attacks by Bild on Klinsmann, whose refusal to ''cooperate'' with the tabloid media only fueled their ire against a player who was admired by the populace for his play and his intellect.
When he began attracting interest from foreign clubs, they called him greedy. Even after Klinsmann had helped Germany win the 1990 World Cup, Bild persisted.
During the 1996 European Championship, when Klinsmann captained Germany to its last major title, German players had been told by staff at their hotel in England to stop entering the sauna nude – a common practice in Germany. Klinsmann was not one of the players involved in what the tabloids called the ''Sauna Skandal,'' but Bild used a photo of a shirtless Klinsmann – taken during a postgame jersey exchange – and cropped it so they had a naked-looking German captain on its cover with a sensationalized account of the incident.
Klinsmann phoned Bild in protest, but said that he would let the matter drop if they promised to make a donation to charity. Bild refused and offered to write two or three positive articles about him. Klinsmann turned down the deal. He sued for $30,000, won in German court, and donated it to charity.
A THINKING MAN.
Siegfried Klinsmann owned a bakery and taught gymnastics in the village of Giengen. But he noticed that his son, Juergen, preferred the soccer field to the gymnasium and let the boy kick around at the sports club where he taught.
At age 9, Juergen joined a real team. He sat on the bench for most of his first game until the coach, realizing the young blond boy could hardly contain himself with excitement, finally called his number.
Before charging onto the field, Juergen turned to the coach and said, ''Please sir, I don't actually know what offside means. Can you quickly run it through with me?''
It was typical Klinsmann – always educating himself.
He mastered Italian after joining Inter Milan, where Coach Giovanni Trapattoni mocked him as a bookworm. ''Your career is soccer. Rest in the afternoon instead of reading!'' said Trapattoni, who years later would suffer as Bayern Munich coach for his lack of German.
Fluent in English as a youngster, Klinsmann learned French while playing for Monaco. In all his stints abroad, on national team trips and on vacations, whether to the USA or Africa, he explored off the beaten track: ''It is the people I meet who are important.''
The German media hailed Klinsmann as a great ambassador for Germany, especially after he won over the Germanophobic English while playing at Tottenham Hotspur.
When he signed with Spurs, the Daily Mirror greeted him with the headline ''Dive Bomber'' and The Times of London called him ''football's supreme con man.''
But soon Tottenham fans sang ''God Save The Klins'' and the ''diver'' epithet gave way to ''Cleansman.'' Klinsmania was declared when Tottenham sold 15,000 Klinsmann jerseys in five weeks.
THE FAMILY MAN.
When Klinsmann retired in 1998 – ''I wanted to be with my family and see my son grow up'' – he moved to Southern California and took courses in computer technology and Spanish, researched the Internet, the U.S. soccer market and youth player development. He became a partner with Mick Hoban and Warren Mersereau in the sports marketing consulting firm SoccerSolutions.
He took Germany's coaching license course ''to see on which level they educate professional coaches.'' To prepare, he spent time in the U.S. national team camp with Bruce Arena and with Coach Sigi Schmid and the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Practicing with the Galaxy tempted him to return to the field, but when he'd come home and see his then 3-year-old son he'd realize, ''That's where I have to be.''
His wife, Debbie, is Californian, but the main reason they chose to reside in America was because he wanted to shield his son and daughter from his celebrity: ''In Germany, they would always be known 'Juergen Klinsmann's children.'''
Because he lived in the USA, Klinsmann's name escaped the radar when the German soccer federation (DFB) desperately sought a replacement for Coach Rudi Voeller after Germany's first-round elimination from the 2004 European Championship.
The coach search proved embarrassing as top choices turned down the job to coach a World Cup host whose performances had become embarrassing. But Klinsmann was ready to apply the knowledge he had accumulated from around the world.
THE REFORMER.
Long ago, legendary Bundesliga coach Max Merkel said, ''The gentlemen at the DFB believe the ball bounces because there's a frog inside.''
Klinsmann was more expansive and precise about his views of the DFB, which he said had ignored the profound changes that had taken place in the environment from which young talent emerges. He said that it needed to completely revamp its player development system and its coaching education.
In July 2004, Klinsmann became German head coach. In his first year, he pushed through many facets of his reform movement even as German coaches took offense that their way wasn't good enough. They scoffed at his use of a team psychologist and American fitness coaches.
He welcomed young, untested players into the squad and changed the team's style from patient buildup to swift attack. The team scored 12 goals and went undefeated in its first five games.
The man who once said, ''Soccer is an art. Not enough people realize this,'' guided the Germans to a third-place finish at the 2005 Confederations Cup, and fans went wild as Klinsmann's team tallied 15 goals in five games.
That Klinsmann commuted from his Southern California home didn't seem to affect his work, but early in 2006 Bild found an angle of attack.
Klinsmann, whose first choice of Berti Vogts as DFB sports director had been turned down by the DFB after criticism from Bild, started considering Bernhard Peters, Germany's extremely successful field hockey coach, for the position.
Before Klinsmann could make his case, Bild got wind of the idea and announced it with a headline, ''A Field Hockey Man? Are we that bad? Or is Klinsmann mad?'' Its story quoted the German national mini-golf coach outlining what he could do for Klinsmann.
''Bild set the tone, but many people understood that we need someone who thinks outside the box, sets guidelines for years to come and brings a view from the outside,'' says Thomas Haeberlein of news agency SID. Says Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberg, author of ''Tor: The Story of German Football,'' ''I think Peters would have been a good choice. Many people think it's about time we brought someone in who'll take a fresh approach.''
But the DFB relented under the tabloid barrage and chose old-school candidate Mathias Sammer. The dispute over Klinsmann's choice for sports director was followed by Germany's 4-1 loss to Italy that unleashed an avalanche of criticism on him. How far Klinsmann can take his revolution in a country inclined to resist change depends on Germany's World Cup performance.
(This article originally appeared in the May 2006 issue of Soccer America Magazine.)