Jurgen Klinsmann is talking about his last job in coaching and how top-level sport hinges on moments.
We’re chatting over Zoom, him in California — lucky sod — me in Newcastle, and on the shelves behind his back I can see the flotsam of his professional life. There are footballs and replica trophies and travel guides to Brazil, Ireland and Ecuador, a reflection of Jurgen’s talent and his inquisitive, restless personality.
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With the European Championship and Copa America on the horizon this month, I wanted Jurgen’s views on Germany and the United States, two national teams he has managed, on England and Harry Kane, and a sense of what it’s like to coach at the biggest tournaments, when success and failure can effectively boil down to a coin-toss. It can be one bad decision in a match, a scuffed shot, a goalkeeper’s error, a referee’s whistle, a penalty. It could be an injury. It is often something wholly beyond your control.
Jurgen picks up the theme.
He takes us back to February 5, the night before his South Korea side played Jordan in the semi-finals of the Asian Cup in Qatar. Their tournament had already featured some sticky episodes — a 3-3 draw with Malaysia in the group stage, scraping past Saudi Arabia on penalties in the round of 16, a 96th-minute equaliser against Australia in the quarters before ultimately winning in extra time — but they had survived and endured, which is half the battle.
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“We kind of fought our way through to the semi-finals of the Asian Cup and we were so pumped up,” Jurgen says. “We were saying, ‘This is our tournament, we’re going to win this thing’.” South Korea have won the competition twice, but not since 1960. There had been edginess and jabbing criticism of Jurgen’s role, but excitement was building — in the team hotel and back home.
“The night before Jordan, we were sitting down for dinner as normal and a few of the younger players got up a bit earlier, which younger players always do,” Jurgen says. “They moved next door to play ping-pong. And then they were a bit loud and so Sonny (Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min) walked over there and suddenly there’s a fallout happening between him and Lee Kang-in (of Paris Saint-Germain) and they went at each other physically.
“Sonny got his finger dislocated and this whole kind of fight then moved into the meal room, where we coaches were sitting. We had no idea what was going on and suddenly we had a huge fight going en masse and then you saw the team spirit flying out of the window. I said to my coaches, ‘Guys, that’s it. There’s no team anywhere, not for the here and now of a semi-final of the Asian Cup against a team that are very physical and very determined’.”
It is an extraordinary image; Son, the Spurs and South Korea captain, that wonderful footballer who plays with a smile, wrestling with a young team-mate who Jurgen calls “the talent in Asian football going forward” a few hours before the equivalent of a Euros or Copa semi-final. Lee has spoken of his regret at the incident an apologised to team-mates, with Son also asking fans to forgive the PSG forward.
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In the months afterwards, I’d read there had been tensions in the squad about whether the junior players were taking the tournament seriously enough, but Jurgen insists it came from nowhere.
“It just happened completely out of the blue; like, you know, guys have an argument and then it gets out of control,” he says. “We never saw anything coming up. Actually, it was the opposite. We were so positive, because we fought our way through games, winning them in the last second and penalty shootouts. We didn’t expect it to go in the wrong direction.
“What made me really sad is that, in that moment, the team and individual players lost the biggest opportunity — probably in their careers — to win the Asian Cup. Because we were so close. If that fight didn’t happen, we would have beaten Jordan and then it would have been a final against Qatar and it’s all to play for. I just feel sorry for them that they took away their own opportunity to win a major trophy.
“Those moments simply don’t come back. That’s what I tried to explain to them on the night. I talked to all of them and I talked to Sonny and Lee Kang-in individually and I just said, ‘Don’t let this moment take the trophy away from you, because you’ve worked so hard for it. You’ve been waiting for years for South Korea to have this opportunity’.
“For Sonny, he’s had a similar path to Harry Kane; he’s been at Spurs for years and been doing well, an exceptional Premier League player, a fantastic lad, everybody likes him, he shows up every season and plays outstanding football, but hasn’t won anything. He’s a very special player and a special individual who is always there for you, and so for him, I wanted it more than anything.
“‘Sonny, this is your moment, this is your Asian Cup, you’re the captain of this South Korean team and I want you to lift this trophy’, I said, but with what happened, and with his dislocated finger, we knew it wasn’t going to happen. The team was just not functional any more. You cannot fix it in one night. It takes months or maybe one or two years to fix something like that.”
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Later that month, Lee, 23, came over from Paris and visited Son in London and the pair reconciled and apologised, but in terms of the Asian Cup, the damage was immediate and fatal. South Korea lost 2-0 to Jordan in that semi-final and a few days afterwards, Jurgen was dismissed. “In the Korean culture, somebody has to take responsibility, take the blame,” he says. “They made us (coaches) responsible for the fight.”
The fallout had been pretty brutal. Jurgen faced criticism for spending too much time at home on America’s West Coast and even for smiling too much after matches, which seems ridiculous when you say it out loud but, although he rejects the first part, he now understands the second.
“People said I never really adjusted to the South Korean lifestyle,” he says. “My response to this was to say, ‘I tried to adjust to a lot of things, but if you want me to 100 per cent adjust to 100 per cent of what you do, then why did you hire a foreigner in the first place? Why did you bring in someone from a different country with a different way of looking at things? If you wanted it to just be the Korean way, it would be much easier to just take a Korean coach, right?’.
“I flew a lot back and forth and a lot between South Korea and Europe because 70 per cent of the players were there. So I went to see Sonny at Spurs or when Kim Min-jae played for Napoli (in Italy). I was constantly on the road; the place I spent the least time was actually in California with my family.
“It was made out that I was never there, but I think I was the only foreign coach of South Korea who ever went to college games, second-division games, youth games. I know it as a place, really, really well now. It’s a fantastic country to visit; high-end, high-tech, great food, clean, nice people, fascinating.”
And on the subject of him smiling?
“This is also part of the experience,” he says. “When you lose a game with South Korea as the coach, you don’t congratulate your opponent and give them a smile. They don’t do that. They shake hands, but very, very seriously, and then move away. That’s what they told me afterwards; obviously, they didn’t tell me before. For them, it’s not something you do. As a coach, you are apologetic and take the blame. Even that little thing is huge, as education.
“The people in the streets were very different. When I went back to Korea and walked through Seoul, they were coming over. Koreans usually don’t hug you. They shake your hand, they have a certain distance, but very polite and kind. But because of that tournament and reaching the semis, they came over and hugged me and said, ‘Coach, thank you. This was the most exciting tournament for decades’. These life experiences are what football is all about.”
The United States is hosting the Copa America, which begins a week after the Euros and is also serving as a dry run for the World Cup it is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico in 2026.
I’ve attended a few Premier League events around America over the past couple of years and have been blown away by the passion and interest from supporters there. With Lionel Messi playing for Inter Miami in MLS, with English clubs desperate to make inroads with the U.S. fanbase, American soccer is clearly riding a wave.
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“It’s mainstream (now),” Jurgen says. “The game itself broke through two or three decades ago. The national team has the quality to get into the knockout phases of big tournaments, MLS is getting bigger every year and if it will never challenge the NBA or the NFL, that’s not the goal, because it’s a nation of 340 million people and there is so much space for success, so much space for football.
“One of the major moves for MLS was David Beckham signing for LA Galaxy in 2007, because that changed the landscape of soccer a lot. And then bringing over Messi to Miami has been a master move, a brilliant move. Wherever Messi goes, stadiums are sold out. He’s just a rock star. For the league, it’s genius and it’s all building towards 2026.
“That (the World Cup) will give football in this region another huge, huge boost. The infrastructure here is ready, the most modern stadiums you can imagine — because when the Americans host something, they go above and beyond. It will be a super tournament, very challenging in terms of travel because the distances will be far, especially when you get to the knockout phase, but it will be fantastic. This is (now) a soccer nation.”
What about that notion of Premier League clubs fulfilling official fixtures in the States, something which is regularly mooted?
“Obviously for us traditional fans, it’s really difficult to take,” Jurgen says. “It would feel like you robbed the game from the English fans, and I totally understand that. On the other hand, the business world is moving on, whether we want it to or not. It’s not our decision, it’s the owners’ decision about how they compete with the other big leagues.
“We’ve had NFL games at Tottenham’s stadium, so why not have Spurs play, I don’t know, at the MetLife Stadium (just outside New York)? For those of us who love the game so much, it’s like taking it away from your home fans, but they also need to keep finding new revenue streams to keep the game going, to keep pushing for trophies and to pay the salaries of players. I think we’ve gone too far in certain elements, but pulling it back is pretty much impossible.”
A zest for travel, and an eagerness to engage and be part of things accompanied Jurgen throughout his playing career.
Famously, he made fun of himself and his reputation for diving when he came to Spurs in 1994, and he also played for clubs in Germany, Italy and France. What a striker he was; 47 goals in 108 appearances for the Germans, a trophy winner at Inter Milan and Bayern Munich. The World Cup in 1990 and the Euros in England six years later (forgive me: grrrr).
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Then, as a young coach, he led his country to third place in the World Cup they hosted in 2006, a youthful, revamped squad playing on the front foot and laying the foundations for their renaissance and Brazil 2014 triumph under Joachim Low, who had been his assistant. He had a brief spell managing Bayern, five years coaching the United States, who reached the last 16 of that 2014 World Cup and the semis of the Copa America two years later. There was a fleeting visit to Hertha Berlin and then South Korea.
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I understand the pull of management, the drug of it, the appeal in improving players, but the international version feels so thankless, for all but a very few. In the club game, there is always next week to look forward to, but tournaments come around so infrequently, every performance is picked apart, managers get slaughtered and, of course, they hold all those players’ careers in their hands.
I was thinking about that when I stumbled on a clip of Landon Donovan, one of America’s greatest players, talking last year about being left out of Jurgen’s squad for 2014 and how hurt he still felt. “They’re extremely difficult decisions for every manager of a national team,” Jurgen says, “because you know you’re taking something away from that player, something that player has dreamt of for his entire life.
“I said to Jürgen there are guys who you're going to take to the World Cup, who'll never play for the U.S. again, will rarely step in the United States again and don’t give a f*ck what happens to U.S. Soccer after this tournament.” pic.twitter.com/GNmoa6pWNL
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) November 6, 2023
“In Landon’s case, it would have been his fourth World Cup; it’s not as if he hadn’t played them before. But I had that experience with the German team in 2006, when I needed to leave three players out when we named the roster, players that totally deserved to be there. In the afternoon it was the press conference and I called them in the morning and I was on the phone, crying with them, just crying. Those moments are really awful.”
All of that begs the question: why put yourself through it? But Jurgen, at 59, is eager for more. He does broadcasting work with ESPN, he is on UEFA’s football board and he does stuff with FIFA, too, but he itches for the front line. “I’d love to continue coaching, because it makes me happy when I work with players,” he says. “My wish is that I come back and get a team that maybe can challenge for the World Cup in 2026.
“My experiences with national teams have been very, very positive, and a World Cup is the tournament that you want to be involved in if you get the chance. I’m not saying that I don’t want to do club football. If an interesting club comes and it’s a fascinating project to take on, then why not?”
Does that include teams in England? I’ve often wondered whether Jurgen might end up back at Spurs, given his history there, although maybe that prospect has now passed him by. “Absolutely, coaching in England is still on my mind, but you need to get the opportunity,” he says. “At least to have a discussion and an open talk about whatever team it would be. It never really came along. I’m not chasing it!
“If an English team comes tomorrow and asks for a conversation and to hear your approach and philosophy, then I would definitely have that conversation. English football is still maybe the purest of the systems, where the manager has a lot of power. At least that’s how it looks to me from the outside looking in. That makes it very attractive for coaches.”
Kane has embarked on Jurgen’s journey as a player in reverse, leaving Tottenham for Germany and excelling in his first season at Bayern, scoring 44 goals in 45 games. “I’m thrilled, because he’s such a good lad,” Jurgen says. “Eventually, he will win something, because Bayern are just too good. The people love him because he’s down to earth, he’s settled. He’s gliding into the lifestyle of Bavaria. The amount of goals he’s scored is insane.”
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It would be nice to think Harry could continue that good form in Germany for England this summer. What does Jurgen make of their chances at these Euros? “It’s been an organic progression for them,” he says. “This is the time to have all the confidence in the world and go to Germany and say, ‘We want this trophy, we are ready for it’. They have very good individuals: Jude Bellingham has had a fantastic season, Harry is the difference-maker. They have all the pieces to win.”
And Germany, the hosts? “It’s kind of all over the place,” he says. “The feelings that Germans right now have for their team, they don’t know really how to take it. It’s a very talented team, there’s no doubt about it, but they haven’t proven it yet and the last couple of tournaments really were poor, to say the least.
“Very deep inside, we have the hope that they maybe can pull it off and create a second summer fairytale after 2006. We hope it’s going to be a fantastic tournament and sunshine and a big party, but they don’t know how to take their own team. Julian Nagelsmann is a young coach with one objective, and that’s to do it his way. This gives us hope, because he’s not political, he’s not there to please the media. He’s there to get the job done.
“They have a tricky opening game against Scotland (next Friday) and we don’t really know how good they are, so there’s this unknown, but what makes me feel positive is how well the German clubs did in the Champions League and the Europa League. They surprised us all. We should be proud of it, because we can somehow pull ourselves together in difficult situations, in moments where you have to become more physical, more nasty. But anything could happen with this German team.”
That’s the thing about international management; glory or disaster hangs by a thread. Or even, in Jurgen’s case, on a game of ping-pong.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamon Dalton)