Totally Extra: A deep dive into Jurgen Klinsmann

0:01The Athletic FC.

0:09Totally extra. Today on the show, bit of this, bit of that, some other random chat and Ina Kleiner Klinsmann, the man who went from bakery to Bayern to Huntington Beach and became a Tottenham legend on the way. Dive in as we salute Jürgen Klinsmann in this Totally Extra.

0:43Hey, listener, it's Totally Extra time again. This is our new spin-off series where we talk about stuff that's not particularly involved in the current timeline. Today, boy, am I excited because we are joined by former totally regular Raphael Honigstein. Hello, Rapha. Hello. German superstar joins Backwater outfit. And Jürgen Klinsmann. Hey. And Jürgen, right. Yeah, yeah. Came back in hour of need. Yeah. Yeah. The parallels are huge. Rapha's back and James and Jules were so excited that they had to come too. Of course. Of course. Hey, Jules. Bonjour. Hey, James. Hello. Woo!

1:28Rafa, moment of the week? Ah, James, you catch me out cold here. I've got nothing prepared. Come back to me, James. Come back to me. Come back to me. This show's more of a meal of the week type vibe, actually. Have you got a meal of the week? Meal of the week? I cooked myself a Dover Soul yesterday. Wow, there you go, everyone. Which was lovely. Absolutely amazing. Really? what was um what's the rafael honigstein doviso technique um super easy just throw it in the oven with a bit of uh salt pepper and olive oil okay 12 30 minutes natural flavor of the fish

2:05James Horncastle: it was so good remember when rafa two days ago was teaching you what john tory is in italian yeah that's extraordinary what is doviso in italian so doviso is sollula sollula it's true but you're right to bring this up because rafa the other day displayed an extraordinary incredible extraordinary knowledge of the names of fish in other languages in one in italian yeah i was going to say jules why don't you see how he is in french i mean oh i know a few in french so Seabass is ludomere. Yeah. Sol is... Sol is sol. Yeah. What about salmon? Oh.

2:52Saumon. Saumon. Très bien. What's... What's cod? Orata. Orata is... Dorad. Dorad. Oui, oui, oui, oui. and cod is bacca bacala that's in Italian merlu as well the bacala bacala is what you do to cod yes so that's moru in French it's meluzzo in it's untreated stage very good I love this chat yeah just while we're on the meals thing people love meal chat James anything you want to flag up of course he eats he eats up every night so like he would have something special i went for curry

3:39James Horncastle: with sandra tonali oh my goodness wow did you see the photo where he had his dirty trainers on oh come on i didn't see everything was perfect on the photo apart from dirty trainers what what okay what were the what were the odds of james going for for lunch with tonali i wonder and picking your curry as well yeah where and when well it was it's sandro's favorite well one of his favorite places in newcastle in newcastle okay yeah and uh yeah we had his three favorite dishes which were they well one is like a uh like an amuse bouche or a bombay bomb she's like i don't ask what's in it but if the food gets too spicy i have one of these and it just cleans the palate he said this is John Alley speaking yeah yeah yeah right and he had like I mean a grilled chicken really with a little bit of spice right and they're trying to build up his spice tolerance right in the restaurant but he you know he was like look at this this is fantastic I was just like that's just chicken over charcoal with a bit of lime right and what else sweet potato oh really no I mean just healthy okay but yeah how was he was he nice lovely what did you have more importantly we shared Oh, you have the same?

4:54James Horncastle: Okay. Good. So, no, lovely. Really good open talker as well. You know, some footballers are always sort of looking at their phones, you know, sort of, when is this going to end? Instead, we kept, I wouldn't say we kept ordering food, but we could have kept going. Right. That's the thing about curry, isn't it? Don't you find? What was the name of this curry house, can I ask? Well, I don't want to give it away. Why? Well, because it's one of his places where... Oh, I see. Yeah, come on, James. Right. Wow, James. That's just great. I had a nice ice cream last night. Oh, yeah? Where? It was matcha pistacho.

5:35And it was matcha with actual pistachos in it. What a great combination. Why has that never been done before? It's very green. Yeah, very green. Bottom of Kingley Street in London. Okay. Adjacent to Carnaby Street. Anyway. on holidays my sister had a pizza oh yeah in this place on il de rey with pistachio on it and yeah yeah and a bit of um that sounds amazing prosciutto would be no i go crudo

6:09so that the pizza was amazing and i i i i teased my sister about it because like pizza with all of that on it. Yeah. But it was really, really good. So I advise it. Great story. Some questions. Lavanham Teacher says, oh, Lavanham Teacher liked our first episode and says, there was a mention on an old Totally Gold by Michael Cox of doing an Enelka special. Why not deliver that just five years later? Asked Lavanham Teacher. Cheekily. That'd be a great one, wouldn't it? Yeah, so many things to say. And he played in a lot of our countries too, so. Did he? Lebs says, question for james why do you like having long hair i mean it's a good question it's a great question we've all asked ourselves but he looks handsome with long hair very much so it's his it's his thing isn't it it's the horncastle trademark we all have things we all you know identify in different ways all right can i show you a photo that i was sent show the listener a photo no but for you to see it this is a photo from april 2006 at the is that jürgen klinsman wow it's jules with long hair that's a very young julian lawrence with long hair right i can see why

7:24James Horncastle: mrs laurent yes was you know so long hair was a thing very much at the time except that james stuck with it yeah and full credit i think rafa had long hair too did he that i'm struggling a Rafa, did you have long hair? A bit early. I'll show you a photo if you want. Yeah, we saw that photo. Did we? Maybe I blanked it from my mind. Did you have long hair, Jimbo? Never. Never? No. Aklak, I'm not sure if I can ask this question. You wish you had now. What? You wish you had long hair now. No. Really? Can you imagine? That would be terrifying. That hair would look good on you. It would look terrible.

7:56Nah. I don't think I want long hair. Anyway, can we get on with the... Aklak says, is it a truth or a myth that Rafa is now a football agent? Can I ask you that question, Rafa? Can you confirm with an eye? I'm not sure I can answer this question. Right. If it's a truth or a myth. I'm trying. I'm trying. Oh, okay. There you go, Akhlak. HBC in 1989 says, will James be coming back to Japan? I recommend trying the culinary delights of Fukuoka. It just so happens, HBC in 1989, that I was in Fukuoka for a very pleasant but somewhat soupy, as the Americans say, sweaty. A week last year, I went to school there and ate in and around the lessons.

8:44Was the food good? Well, I almost cried. It was that good? Yeah, well, there was one place that I went where I pretty much cried over a little nigiri. It was a omakaze, and various little offerings had come through magnificently, immaculately prepared by the chef, Mr. Sakai, Sakai-san. Sushi Sakai is the place. And there was one, there was an otoro, fati tuna nigiri that was, why did it move me so much? Yeah, yeah, that's the question. It was really expensive. but I think more than that it was Omikaze is really nice because you just take the time to you stop and you let the flavors kind of explode in your mouth and this was a particularly extraordinary journey that it took me on and at the same time I wonder if there was a hint of Paolo Rossi's lament at the winning of the 1982 World Cup that he looks around him and he knows that it will never be as good as this again that that moment of triumph of joy is already dissipating never to return um jimbo san jimbo san you went to school well i did i've got i've got this

9:59James Horncastle: imagination of like um do you remember that robin williams film jack or something where he's like i never saw i think where he's like a grown man or he's a child in a man's hello fellow and kids you're going to school like kindergarten school but learning japanese with them no i was with other, I would say grown-ups, but I was probably at the north end of the spectrum age-wise. And very much at the bottom of the class in terms of knowledge. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, I'm rubbish. But I, you know, I went. There were good days, bad days. You know, that's cool. Anyway, enough of my yakking. Let's open the Almanac.

10:39This is the Totally Football Show with James Richardson, part of the Athletic FC Podcast Network.

10:48This week in football history, and younger listeners, you and I are going to learn a lot here. In 1995, Tony Yeboah scored an incredible volley for Leeds against Liverpool. Torrigo looking for Wallace. Now Yeboah with a chance. Oh, a stunning goal.

11:12Tony Aboua produces a fierce finish to score his third goal of the season in only his second match of the season for Leeds United Aboua the hero again and Leeds are ahead I say it's incredible but watching it back you think of that and you think of Dejan Stankovic's volley from the halfway line against, what was that, Schalke?

11:37James Horncastle: Yeah. Why does anyone talk about Yeboah? People should talk more about Yeboah. No, they should talk more about Stankovic. Yeboah is just fine, but it's not nothing. Oh, I would agree differently. You disagree, as we call it, yeah. Yeah. What did I say? Agree differently. I'll agree differently with you. I like this. This is like, we didn't have a word for welcome back, but we've got a phrase called, I agree differently. I agree differently. So the Yeboah strike is nice, but the way that it's spoken about 20 years later. Oh, but it's under the lights. It's what comes before the volley too. Okay.

12:16That Stankovic doesn't have. And also... No, Stankovic, that's what's so impressive. It's hoofed out from, I think, the goalkeeper in Stankovic's case, and he volleys it back. Yeah, yeah. It's Neuer. It's Neuer as well, isn't it? It's Neuer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's insane, that guy.

12:29James Horncastle: I agree differently. I'm with Jules. also because that lead shirt is such an iconic lead shirt in terms of the crest which is just initials and also it's almost like a turtleneck but that's got nothing to do with it it's the greatest goal scored in a turtleneck I've ever seen both are great both are great obviously any other great volleys we're going to talk about some great volleys today when we get on to if there's time our topic that Jürgen Klinsmann the Zinedine Zidane volley in the Champions League final on this left foot is pretty special too on this week in this week in football history the first ever edition of match of the day aired 1964 it's still going you know yeah yeah and the first ever substitute in an english football league match came on do you know what year that was anybody what year did the first ever substitution occur in an english football league match 1980 should we do this should we reveal this at the end we'll reveal it at the end listener no peaking OK, what else?

13:37Well, this week in 1994, Jürgen Klinsmann made his Premier League debut, which is handy because he's the subject of today's nostalgic look-back-a-roo.

14:03the Jurgen Klinsmann. Oh, it's four for Klinsmann. And it's four for Monaco. Klinsmann, Fuller and Litvarski waiting in the middle and Klinsmann gets brought crashing down. This is going to be... Oh, it's red.

14:21James Horncastle: Jurgen Klinsmann has been an inspired signing from Spurs chairman Alan Sugar, who deserves great credit. So I'll get in tender, which is a small boat, go up into the offices of Monaco and sitting there was the boss of Monaco and Arsene Wenger. And they said, yeah, okay, you can have him. Two million quid. I just wanted to ask if there's any diving school in London. I heard a few stories there about it. Flinsman! How to announce your arrival. Oh, and yes, he does have a sense of humour. Is this four for Klinsmann? It might be. It is. Klinsmann uneins with the new, but in München, the former trainer Giovanni Trapattoni.

15:12The problem is, Jürgen Klinsmann, which we can touch on in many more episodes, isn't a great coach. I've got a big problem with him as a person. And yes, he holds grudges. Yeah, Spurs let go Mourinho. I had a quick phone call there with Daniel Levy and he said, let's see down the road what all happens. Now, is this something that would be of interest to any type of a manager? Yeah, absolutely. Tottenham is Tottenham. Extraordinary Jürgen Klinsmann. What a career. And then after, what a career as he moved into management. In career. In career. Now, a lot of people will know him from Spurs, from that goal celebration.

15:54A lot of people, younger listeners, are going to know him more from his recent flops, if you will, as manager. But there's so much more to this man. So let's begin, Rafa, by asking, what does Jürgen Klinsmann mean to Germans? I think, first of all, he means to Germans, he is one of the guys who won the World Cup for Germany in 1990. Him and Rudi Föller played a huge role in that. He had his best of a game, maybe of his career, when Föller was sent off in an infamous spitting incident with Rijkaard in the quarterfinals against the Dutch. And he became a superstar that year. And of course, with Matthäus and Bremer at Inter, I think his image rose higher.

16:45And then for many Germans, he was also the guy who brought the Premier League into their lives, if you will, because before Klinsmann, nobody really paid much attention of the Premier League in Germany. But suddenly, because he was there at the height of his power, it became a big thing. It became a story. And then later on in the second act, of course, he was again hugely influential for Germany as the national manager who took them to the third place in the 2006 World Cup. and really started kind of the rebirth of the national team at this level. And yeah, both on and off the pitch, somebody who left big footprints in a very positive sense.

17:28Excellent. Would you say he's one of the most significant transfers then at the Premier League? Certainly up to that point in 1994 when he arrived at Spurs, was he one of the most significant arrivals ever?

17:41James Horncastle: I felt so as a kid growing up because I was 10 when Spurs signed Jürgen Klinsmann. And I was kind of too young for the kind of when Cantona came over with Leeds and then Man United. So I just thought of Cantona as being part of the furniture, along with all the other kind of Scandi players that were around the Premier League at the time because that's where we used to do our business, Scotland and Scandi. And then Klinsmann came after the 94 World Cup. and I always remember his debut away at Hillsborough against Chef Wednesday, which is like a Premier League classic game. 4-3, that Spurs side was really entertaining, kind of Aussie RD there.

18:21James Horncastle: You had Sheringham and Klinsman up front, Darren Anderton, Nicky Barmbi, who is from where I'm from. Right. And I remember in the schoolyard, there were like kind of four football celebrations that we would do in that kind of period. So there was the Sharpie Shuffle. Okay. Lee Sharp, classic, can still do that. There was Canton obviously putting his collar up. Later there would be Ravinelli. Ravinelli. When he was at Borough putting his shirt over his head. And then there was the Klinsman dive. Okay. On asphalt? Yeah, that's tough. Well, because I'm a northerner, yes, of course. It's tough in the playground, but you're brave.

19:03James Horncastle: It's just what we do. But what season, I mean, I look back now and that season with Spurs is actually better than Ravinelli's season. Ravinelli scores more goals, I think, in all competitions. But in the league, Klinsmann is incredible. He scored five goals in his first four games and he got cleaned out by Des Walker. And I watched the highlights going into this podcast of that Chef Wednesday Tottenham game. And it's like a really, really bad injury. you've got Ian Dark saying oh look it's terrible and the camera unsparingly is just focused on Klinsmann who seems to be bleeding from his nose or his mouth completely concussed and then is taken off with gas and air welcome to the Carling Premier Show yes what's incredible is just one season and the impact that he's had on one season if you play like five, six years plenty of time to have an impact on younger generations stats wise everything but just one season to have mark the Premier League like that, like he did, it's remarkable.

20:03One and a half, I guess, because there is that breeze later on. But he never stayed anywhere for five seasons, did he? Itchy feet he had, Jürgen. Rafa? Yeah, just to pick up on what James said, he was the guy that introduced me to the Premier League in many ways because I started going to see him play at Spurs when I was in London that year. And nostalgia alert. But in those days, you could just go into H &B on Oxford Street, into the basement where they sold tickets, and buy a Spurs ticket like 10 days before the game. It was just not a thing, you know, to be a season ticket holder or anything.

20:40And you just go and watch Spurs play. And it was wonderful. And I think he really validated the league in a sense that suddenly then opened the doors to a lot of European players who suddenly realized, oh, you know, this is actually a fun league. There is actually now real money. And it's suddenly interesting after years being really a nothing league because of the effects of the ban and so on. And then I think without Klinsmann, maybe it would have taken longer to see the likes of Bergkamp and Viali and de Gullit arrive in his wake. I think that would have always come because the Premier League started to exert that pull financially and in terms of a product.

21:24but Klinsmann kind of showed also the English that these European guys they could actually work because what was so amazing or such an eye-opener for me was just how much people hated him before he before he came in I watched the the World Cup in 94 in England and most of the commentaries used to be on him being a cheat and look how he's diving and look how he's rolling around and And to be fair, he was really quite, shall we say, expressive when it came to showing the referee he was being fouled. But I didn't quite understand just how visceral sort of the reaction to that was and how people just disliked that kind of European foreign trickery.

22:10And of course, he brilliantly subverted everything with that dive to celebrate in that first game when he scored the goal in his throw. But before even that, in his very first press conference, he says this with his first comment to the English media. I just wanted to ask if there's any diving school in London. I heard a few stories there about it. Rafa, that's a little window into how Klinsman tackles problems, no? That comment. Certainly at the time, I think he realised that self-deprecating humour is going to be the winner for him. He actually arrived to that first press conference with goggles and a snorkel.

22:46but then thought it's maybe a little bit over the top if he puts them on right and for a german i must say i think he his grasp of humor was uh was brilliant and really endeared him to to everyone and he was also so low-key you know there was no airs and graces about him he famously drove around in a beetle volkswagen beetle through hampstead he didn't charge newspapers for for interviews which was very much the fashion at the time you want to speak to me give me a couple of grand and now talk to you no he would just talk to to them thinking it's part of his job and didn't seem to have those um yeah that's kind of superstar uh as in graces that perhaps people expected of somebody like him okay so everyone thought his press conference was brilliant with the the diving gang but christian gross pulls out a tube ticket and nobody laughs at all it's just a thin line isn't it why did he so tottenham when he when he joined were facing a 12 point deduction yeah and expulsion from the FA Cup for financial irregularities.

23:45Now, they were later rescinded, but what made him decide to join a club like that? Well, Alan Sugar arrived in his yacht in Monaco, where Klinsmann was living at the time, because of course, he was playing for Arsene Wenger's Monaco. And as the story goes, he phones up Klinsmann and Klinsmann says, hello, who's this? He says, Alan Sugar, come out and watch me. I'm the guy with the blue boat. And that's how he pitched to Klinsmann on the yacht. and he was clever enough, Sugar, to bring a photographer with him who snapped that meeting and then it was all splashed all over and maybe scared off one or two of his other suitors because I think he had an offer from Barcelona at the time, he had an offer from Genoa at the time, but Sugar very cleverly engineered it, which came back to bite him somewhat.

24:33Of course, he gave Klinsmann a release clause. I think that was part of the reason why Klinsmann said yes, if I don't like it, if this doesn't really go the way I wanted to go then I can I can leave again which he did of course in that summer of 95 and the money was good I think it was 15 000 pounds a week at the time which by 2025 standards 30 years later doesn't sound that much but at the time was was very serious money even in European context and Klinsmann loved the idea and was very fusive about how sort of childlike brackets chaotic disorganized football was in the Premier League and as a striker you just you could just do whatever you wanted you know you didn't have to fall back into position like you had to do at Inter where it was all about you know working hard and being compact you could just basically enjoy yourself and express yourself, especially in Ossia deal is crazy, crazy Spurs.

25:35And he absolutely loved it and told everyone just how much fun it is to play in the Premier League. Excellent. Until it wasn't. Spurs paid£2 million at the time for him because he had one year left on his contract at Monaco. So in a three-year deal, yeah, only stayed two seasons. £2 million at the time, it'd be like what Rafa was saying for his wages. It's a decent amount for somebody with just one year left on his contract. Indeed. We should talk about Monaco, we should talk about Milan, Inter Milan, we should talk about Munich as well, and of course all the stuff that comes after he hung up his shooting boots, Jules.

26:08But Raph, let's go back to the very, very start, because Jürgen is a Stuttgart born and bred in a very real sense, because he comes from a family of bakers. Absolutely, and the family still owned that bakery throughout his career, and sometimes he would help out and bake a few breads. Yeah, Swabian pretzels. Is it Swabian pretzels? Swabian pretzels are his speciality. What's a Swabian pretzel? They're very much like a Bavarian pretzel. Okay. What's a Bavarian pretzel? You know, a pretzel. Okay, right. But people in Swabia claim that theirs is better than the Bavarian, which I completely disagree with and it's absolute nonsense pretzel logic what are the famous

27:02James Horncastle: German breads, what, pumpernickel yeah, I mean because France, I mean, France wins this do they do baguette in Clintons' bakery do they do baguette no, they do baguette come on Raph, what are the other German bread is unbeatable what? Brote yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Klinsmann certainly always enjoyed a role in his career. His early performances were for Stuttgart kickers, but then, of course, he ditched them for their city rivals to make his professional debut, is that right, in 1984? Yeah, VfB Stuttgart. And he won, of course, the league with them. which was a big thing. And he scored that fantastic goal for Stuttgart against Bayern, that overhead kick, which was the goal of the...

27:58Certainly the goal of the year, maybe the goal of the decade, even. I'm not 100 % sure on that.

28:06And that, on the back of that, he then had his big move to Italy, where he joined Lothar and Andy Bremer. Yeah, one of the three tedeschi. So, OK, James, how did he... I hope you'll excuse the expression, go down in Italy?

28:22James Horncastle: He went down well. I mean, he joined a team that was coached by Giovanni Trapattoni, whose success with these Germans would obviously later lead to him to get to the Bayern, get the Bayern job where he would coach Klinsmann again. And I think Klinsmann said that, you know, at this stage of Trapp's career, you know, his end goal was really was to play with a goalkeeper and 10 defenders. but Klinsmann joined an inter-side that had just set a record points total in the history of Italian football back when it was two points for a win and I mean he wasn't a part of the league winning side that Matthias and Bremer were but you know completed this this trio so you had this nice symmetry in Milan between the three Dutchmen of AC Milan and the the three Germans at Inter.

29:11James Horncastle: And I mean, I think it was quite unlucky not to win the league in his first season. That was the year when Samp won the Scudetto. I mean, that league was incredibly competitive. Samp with Mancini, Viali and Tonino Sorezzo. Actually, Sorezzo, I think, had left by that point. But so many talents. You had Maradona still at Napoli. You had the three Dutchmen at Milan. Yeah, you had even Juventus going for a rebuild. Still a good Juventus side. but obviously I mean he joins after winning the World Cup in Italy and you know gets into double figures in two of his three seasons there won the UEFA Cup and you know scored in the big game scored in the Derby d 'Italia scored in the Madonnina as well and you know we were talking about this earlier like he's Klinsmann looks different he had this kind of mop of blonde hair I would say the blondest player that I've ever had the job.

30:09James Horncastle: Because he would score these kind of glancing headers or these diving headers, you'd see this kind of whiplash of gold, the sort of flaxen hair. It made him really stand out. And I would say, I mean, obviously, Matthäus and I think Bremer are considered to be more important. Certainly, Lothar, an inter kind of legend. And inter-law is the bigger player. and Klinsmann comes at the end of them sort of signing. So, I mean, that run of them signing Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Rummenigge didn't win anything with Inter but was very fondly remembered and still speaks really good Italian, still speaks about Inter.

30:51James Horncastle: And then you had Lothar come, Bremer come. They win the league and Klinsmann is the last in that line. But certainly had a good couple of years there. and you know he did better than you know one of the guys who came after him which was you know well there was Darko Pancev who was who was known as the viper I think when he was the cobra but the the Inter fans called it called him the I think it was the ramaro which is the grass snake the grass snake and then Dennis Bergkamp obviously came and yeah Bergkamp was juxtaposed with Van Basten, the Swan of Utrecht and Bergkamp was known as the Cold Turkey.

31:33The Cold Turkey. Did they have a nickname for Jürgen Klinsmann that you can recall? He was very popular, the way I remember it. He turned up, I think, speaking Italian in classic Klinsmann fashion and charmed everyone with his kind of easy going ways. At the end of that first season at Inter of course comes the World Cup, which Rafa mentioned before, which culminates in the final in Rome with Klinsmann a key part really of that that victory because it's him who gets Pedro Monzon sent off you mentioned his ability to flag up to the referee that he might have been involved in a challenge but this is an extraordinary example Monzon goes in studs up to be fair Klinsmann vaults about six foot up in the air lands and then springs back up again in order to fall over one more time just in case you know for the slow guys at the back but yeah It worked off Monserwin and Germany won the title.

32:31Yes! The game is out! Germany is completely right after a first-class idea of the World Football League of the World Cup. The Kaiser has the crown, the German team, the medal, and we had fun with this German team.

32:58for HR, finance and IT, with AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new work day.

33:13James Horncastle: This is The Totally Football Show, part of the Athletic FC podcast network. The Athletic is the only place you can read articles by Daniel Taylor, Amy Lawrence, Phil Hay, James Pearce, Olly Kaye and the very best football writers around. Jules, after Inter, because after a bit, he got tired of Trapattoni, Corrado Orico came in, didn't really work out. Anyway, off he goes and now he joins Monaco with Arsene Wenger. Yeah, very much Arsene Wenger. The attraction there, I think, for Klinsmann, the German language. I mean, the idea of living in Monaco, which he really enjoys. It's a good team at the time.

33:50They just lost against Werder Bremen in the final of the Cup Winners' Cup in 1992, for example. And Marseille are the best team. And there's a lot of Germans at the time in France because Rudi Foller plays for Marseille. Beckenbauer had been there. Foster had been there too. So there's those big influx of German players too. And for Klinsmann to go to Monaco kind of makes sense, really. They need a striker initially to play with George Weah. Right. But he gets sold to PSG the next day. Yeah, which Klinsmann didn't know, exactly. Right. And Wenger has always said to him, when Klinsman said, but you told me that I would play, it would be me and George Weah up front.

34:24And Wenger said, well, if I told you that I was going to sell George Weah, you would have never come. So I had to lie. In the end, his first season was amazing. He scored 20 league goals in 30 league games. He was really unstoppable. Well, they finished second behind Marseille, but you can make a strong case that they actually did win that league because it's that Marseille team who are then banned from Europe over their place in the Champions League goes to Monaco. And Marseille lost the title for bribery, basically. But it was never given to Monaco. No, it was not given to anybody. It's not Italy.

34:58It's not Italy, yeah. Nobody has won this 92-93 title where Monaco finished close second and Arsene Wenger has always said that really they should have won him and Monaco and the Klinsman team should have won more titles than they did because of what Marseille and Bernat-Tepi did. But he still did well carrying that team. The second season was a bit different. He had an injury, scored less goals. Although they did well in the Champions League because they went all the way to the semifinal against Milan and lost in the semifinal against Milan, where Klinsmann was good. It was just not the same.

35:28And after that, you felt Wenger was sacked a bit later in September, but already on his way out, you could feel that it was the end of the cycle. And I think that's why Klinsmann also looked to leave and went to Spurs. And went to Spurs. So I remember Michael Cox speaking on a totally gold back in the lockdown times about Klinsmann's arrival and what a revelation he was because his movement and his technique was just on another level to pretty much everybody else in the Premier League at that time. Was that how you recall, Rafa? Yeah, I mean, James alluded to it. Foreigners weren't really of the technical variety.

36:06There were Scandinavians, there were Scots, so they were kind of very much in line with the English characters in terms of the talent. And Klinsmann isn't the most technical of players either. At Bayern, they famously and very cruelly dubbed him pinball flipper because the balls would just bounce off him and you had no idea where they would go. But I think his athleticism and his ability to arrive in the right moment at the right time was quite amazing. And of course, he scored, you know, volleys and overhead kicks and headers. And his timing seemed to be superb. And I think he also, another fact that he probably was also one of the cleanest living guys in the Premier League at a time when teams would still regularly go out on the piss on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

37:03He certainly wasn't part of that. and I think that extra bit of professionalism and athleticism really was telling. Where does he stand in the pantheon of Germany's greatest ever strikers? Because his numbers for the Mannschaft are extraordinary. He played and scored in six tournaments, won the Euros in 1996, won the World Cup in 1990. He's got 11 World Cup goals, only I think five players have had more than that. 40 goals in about 80, hang on, let me get the exact numbers here. Yeah, 108 caps, 47 goals for Germany. So how does he rank alongside the others? Well, in Germany, there's Gerd Müller and then there's everyone else.

37:45But among everyone else, the second tier, he is very much part of that. He's part of that tier with Rummenigge, Föller, Uwe Zela, Miroslav Kloze. That's where he belongs. So whether he's the fourth or the fifth or the sixth is up for the bait. He's definitely not Gerd Müller. Nobody is. nobody will ever be Gerd Müller but he is the next thing down from that for sure 11 year career with Germany that longevity at that kind of level is really impressive yeah and of course one of the few strikers who won both the World Cup and the Euros there's not of the ones that I mentioned only Gerd Müller was able to do that

38:29James Horncastle: also for me I mean just a reminder I suppose of the German kind of diaspora in those years in terms of you go back to that UEFA Cup final where Inter played Roma and you've got Rudi Vola playing for Roma you've got Thomas Berthold playing for Roma you've got the three Germans playing for Inter so yeah they were all playing and they were protagonists in what was at the time the best league in the world and then for Klinsmann to come to the Premier League and make the impact that he did in that one year and then to return and win the Euros on English soil, that's kind of reinforced to me like, wow, okay.

39:09James Horncastle: Everything that I've grown up being told about the Germans is kind of true in terms of them being such a dominant football nation. And just their confidence. For me, the villain of my childhood was very much Andy Muller. Okay. In terms of strutting, peacocking, kind of clockwork orange looking, kind of, you know, sort of he just had a swagger to him which had, it showed a confidence that I just felt we as a nation lacked on the football pitch. Who was the villain of your youth, Jules? Has to be a Marseille player. Really? Yeah, I can't really remember what my dad, who my dad says. I don't have villains but I'm surprised that James mentioned Annie Muller as a villain when he so clearly modelled part of his hairstyle on the mullet.

40:01Ah, the Müller mullet.

40:05James Horncastle: It's not a mullet, come on. So we've got lots of listeners writing in with happy memories, warm memories of Jürgen Klinsmann. Nick says, I was there for his Spurs debut pre-season away to Watford. You knew he was special. When in the warm-up, they're doing keepy-uppies to each other in a circle. He's doing it with his shoulder. Different class to everyone else. And he felt like the first big-name foreigner to grace the Premier League in his prime. Matthew mentions the four goals that Klinsmann scored against Wimbledon in 98, which helped Spurs avoid relegation. We'll come back to his return to Spurs in a bit.

40:36But Rafa, his stint at Bayern then as a player and indeed as a manager didn't work out the way I think everyone was anticipating. Yes and no. I mean, he helps Bayern win the first European title in more than 20 years, or exactly 20 years, I should say, by scoring 15 goals in UEFA Cup. has a big role in that. But it's all slightly overshadowed by Bayern developing into this sort of football soap when he was there. That's when the FC Hollywood moniker is being created. That's when almost every day you see Basler or Scholl or Effenberg or Mateus doing something slightly weird or crazy that ends up on the wrong side of the newspaper front page rather than the back page.

41:29And of course, Klinsmann, as the arch enemy of Mateus, or he develops into that, is very much part of that. And it's Mateus against Klinsmann. They both can't get along. There's a real struggle for who's kind of in charge of this team. And it famously culminates in Mateus on air, challenging Klinsmann for a meeting on air to air the grievances and talk things out in front of the camera. Wow, what did he say? I agree differently. Which Klinsmann very politely declines, of course. Right. But they really didn't get along, and it was a source of endless drama. And I think Klinsmann, in that circus that Bayern became in those years, with his very withdrawn kind of professional nature, almost got a little bit sort of lost and swept up in all of that.

42:26but you could see that a year later when Trapattoni comes back and he really falls out of favour that Klinsmann is just not willing to stick around and then leaves quite quickly after that Where is the rivalry coming from between Matteus and Klinsmann? Is it just two different personalities two strong leadership where does that come from? I think they are so different they just never really got out and Inter the fact that they were Germans and sort of foreigners together I think they they got along well enough but in Munich where it was about you know who is the leader who who calls the shots who um that you know this is a time Jules when when players still make a lot of decisions on the pitch you know are we now um risking a few more things they're not looking so much towards the manager the manager will have sent them out with some basic ideas but this is this is still the area where players kind of in in control of the game a lot more and Klinsmann wants one thing and Mateus wants another thing and they just don't get along as people they're just so opposite that um it uh it all boiled over right James was chuckling when you said that because I think he's going to mention how Jürgen very much reprised that managerial approach when he was by a manager later on no I was going to say I was going to

43:46James Horncastle: actually push back a little because trap always used to say you can do whatever you want on the pitch as long as it's what i say there you go so any trap and tony well well the buy-in players um and klinsman of course was a symbol of that and there's this famous or infamous moments where he kicks this advertising uh can on the side a giant can made of cardboard on the side of the pitch and he gets his foot stuck um because he's so upset that trapper tony takes him off but he's also upset and a lot of Bayern players also upset because the football was basically unwatchable it was right route one we were not going to concede and up front something will happen but it was it was really terrible especially for the centre forwards and Klinsmann had a really horrible time well after his spell at Bayern he had a little stint in Genoa with Sam Doria but only four months because didn't fancy that and Spurs came calling again they were I think 19th possibly, but they had been 19th in that season.

44:52Jürgen returned. It wasn't the happiest, I think, of relationships with the Spurs manager Christian Gross at that point. But come the end of the season with the game that Matthew references, that match against Wimbledon where he scores four, they do indeed stay up. You know, as a player, we talked about his prowess, his ability, his blonde locks, et cetera. Let's get on to Jürgen on the bench next.

45:28James Horncastle: Want to turn challenges into chances? Go digital enterprise and adapt to every change by combining the real and digital worlds. Transform the everyday with Siemens. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT. With AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new Workday.

46:03James Horncastle: You're listening to The Totally Football Show with James Richardson, now with you four times a week. Keep up to date with us on Insta and enjoy us in glorious Technicolor on YouTube at The Totally Show. Thanks for having me here today and pretty excited. I'm really excited about this opportunity, this chance to coach the US team. Jürgen Klinsmann as a player has won it all. Jürgen's managerial career is also the story of one of the game's great talents. He's Asian, some would say. It started well, Rafa. Jürgen on the bench. in 2004, he takes over Germany from Rudi Vüller and initiates a big transformation takes them into the semi-final of the Homeworld Cup in 2006 Why did Germany bring him in?

46:58He didn't have any experience as a manager, Rafa No, Germany wanted to appoint Otmar Hitzfeld after 2004 but Hitzfeld was quite burnt out and felt he needed a much bigger break after finishing his spell at Bayern and turned them down. And literally, this is the second, of course, second disaster at the Euros in succession after the 2001 Germany once again bomb out of the group stage in 2004. They're looking around and they don't know who to pick. There's a real sense of we don't know what to do. And Klinsmann, cleverly, gives this interview in Zutarche Zeitung, my paper, a whole page interview where he talks about the need to completely rip everything up and start again.

47:48And he references his experiences abroad and says, how come that German football isn't producing a Wayne Rooney type of player? How come our youth academies are only producing holding midfielders, but not centre forwards, not exciting players? We really need to start again. and that interview is so strong and so powerful and there's such a daft of other candidates that suddenly the German FA think, you know what, let's go with Klinsmann. And from the first moment, there's a huge backlash against him from certain sections of the media who wanted somebody like Mateus or somebody a bit more friendly towards them.

48:27And it gets to the point before the World Cup where they play a game against USA in March 2006 And six, having lost against Italy 4-1 a couple of weeks before, maybe the same week, I'm not 100 % sure, but not long before, where if Klinsmann loses that game, there's a big chance that actually he gets sacked before the World Cup. But of course, then the World Cup becomes a huge success. Everyone loves him. And he cleverly, again, I think, has somebody in Joachim Löw who does the actual coaching and the stuff with the team. and he is more the guy, the big picture guy, who says, let's do everything differently toward the way we have done it before.

49:13Let's bring in American fitness guys. Let's no longer do the German way of just running through the woods. Let's be a lot more focused on what you need to be an athlete and take your clues from American sports, take your clues from other countries. and all these things are belittled and being made fun of. But then very quickly after 2006 become introduced in almost every German club because he has broken the mould and people have seen that it worked. But then, of course, when he takes over Bayern a couple of years later, he doesn't translate into success at club football. Is it true that he immediately installed as one of his first things, statues of Buddha around the training ground?

50:00No, that's not true. That's not true. He got a lot of flack because of that. He was in charge of the overhaul of sort of the first team section within the Bayern training ground. And again, he had a lot of ideas, you know, build an auditorium where you have simultaneous translation, where you have booths for the translators, where you have big screens for tactical analysis, all things that 20 years later sound completely kind of normal, but he had a lot of ideas. and the interior decorator in charge put on the roof terrace a couple of Buddha statutes and in very Bavarian, arch Bavarian, stormstreet Bavarian Munich, that becomes a story and somehow he gets tainted by the brush, but it had nothing to do with him.

50:49But it became a stick to beat him with when things didn't work out for Bayern and when it became clear quite quickly that as a coach without Joachim Löw, he was slightly out of his depth and could not really steer Bayern into the future, into modernity the way he had wanted. Okay, Philip Lahm talking about this in his autobiography that players would meet before kickoff to talk about their strategy because Klinsmann had essentially given them nothing. He was sacked with five games to go in that league campaign. So what is the perception then that he was successful in 2006 because of Yogi Löw And after that, that's what was missing.

51:32Or what else would be the explanation for the way that things have gone so badly wrong for him? Whether it's at Hertha Berlin, where he lasted just 76 days. And then is it true he resigned via Facebook? And then South Korea, who looked at that and thought, hmm, we'll have some of that. And brought him in. He failed to make the World Cup with South Korea and then got fired with that incredible squad. let's remember, after a 2023 Asian Cup defeat to Jordan in the semi-final of that tournament. Was he never that good or what happened? No, I think he was instrumental and was very good at what he did in 2006 because he had a good team around him.

52:14And because coaching a national team is very different to coaching a club team where you have to work with a team every three days and you cannot perhaps rely so much on motivation. I think his motivational powers are very good. His sort of ideas of opening the player's eyes and doing different things with them. This German national team, they did a lot of sort of extracurricular activities. They learned how to open up a watch, you know, like a clock watch builder, watch builder course and all sorts of things. But things that can be, I think, a little bit gimmicky if you hear them every three or four days.

52:50and if this kind of very Californian can-do attitude and always positivity feels a little bit flat and thin after a while when it's not the highs of playing against Italy in the semifinal of the World Cup. So I think he was, with all the intensity he brought into the role with all the kind of the energy was perfect for a short-term project. And he, I think, realized that by stepping down after the World Cup, when everyone wanted him to stay, He said, no, no, my race is run. I'm done here. I don't want to continue. I can't continue because it cost me a lot of energy. When he then tried his hand at club football and make that a more sustainable thing, I don't think he had enough tactical acumen.

53:35And certainly at Bayern, the big problem that his number two was a guy from the States who also had no experience at this level. And the combination of them just wasn't enough for this Bayern team. Right. and with the national team certainly whether the although it began well with the USMNT winning the gold cup and winning indeed the CONCACAF coach of the year in 2013 tailed off badly a lot of supporters very unhappy with him by the time we went tremendous unhappiness with him at South Korea not least for the fact that he made so few appearances in in the country will he pop up again do you think as a manager i i doubt it i think after the south korea experience i think his stock is probably quite low i think he could still be sort of a project builder if especially if in the states a a big mls team would come to him and said you know find us uh some new structures find us some new ways of doing it i think he would love that not not not statues structures within the organization i think he could he could do a decent job but i think coaching has become so much more specialized and such a different different discipline compared to his playing days and compared to the start of his coaching career that i i just don't see him okay interesting because a different nick as he titles himself i wrote in with very much that that suggestion.

55:04Did Klinsman miss his calling as a director of football or another strategic position rather than manager? His greatest impact at Germany in the US were cultural and physical rather than tactical?

55:14James Horncastle: No, I mean, the thing that I saw him doing recently was supporting his son, who is now a player, Jonathan, who plays in goal in Italy for Cesena in the second division. And it was a Coppa Italia first round, I think, last week. they played against Pisa who have just been promoted to Serie A and it went down to a penalty shootout I think he made a couple of saves but they were still eliminated so there you go he's just a proud dad now just a proud dad well I feel sure we're going to hear from him again soon he's on ESPN if you want as a pundit is he on ESPN all the best people are Jules he's very good Rafa it was lovely to see you today thank you it was lovely to see us it was lovely to see you I know you won't want to leave, though, without me revealing the answer to the question that I posed way back at the start of today's show.

56:07Was it in the 1970s? When was the first ever substitution in an English League match? Which year? 1968. James Horncastle?

56:17James Horncastle: He's so specific, he's Googled this. I can tell you he hasn't because it was 1965. I wasn't far. A number, another summer. He said 1980 this week. 1965, the first substitute to come on was a gentleman called Keith Peacock, who's the father of Gavin Peacock. Oh. Yeah. Came on for Charlton against Bolton. He later released an autobiography called No Substitute, which is factually incorrect. But anyway, his son, Gavin Peacock, famously became a priest after his new class in the United States. Yeah, the father of a preacher man was Keith Peacock. Magnificent. Magnificent. Well, on that note, we salute you, Raphael Honigstein.

56:56Thank you so much for being with us today. And I'm sure we're going to meet up and chat about more great times in football soon enough. Many thanks to you as well, Jules and James. We'll be seeing you guys next week at an unspecified time, but we think it might be. I agree differently. Lovely stuff. Anyway, it may not be next week by the time you hear this, listener, because that's totally extra, everyone. It's just going to sit there. Yeah. Thanks, James. Thanks, Jules. Thanks, Producer Charlie. Thank you, listener. We'll be back with another Totally Extra next week. For now, from all of us here, it's goodbye.

57:33James Horncastle: You've been listening to The Totally Football Show, part of the Athletic FC podcast network. For more great podcasts just like this one, including The Athletic FC and our dedicated club podcasts, search for The Athletic on Apple, Spotify and all the usual places. We're also at The Totally Football Show on Insta and at The Totally Show on YouTube. The Totally Football Show is an Athletic Media Company production.

58:01The Athletic FC.

58:09Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT. With AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new Workday.