The FFT101: Jurgen Klinsmann
GP writes: In May 2019, a special anniversary issue of FourFourTwo celebrated the finest players in the magazine’s 25-year history. As someone who was working there for more than half of that time, I was understandably asked to contribute - including this piece on English football’s first Jurgen.
Shortly after the World Cup broke new ground by being held in the USA, a new arrival burst into English football and raised its level of intelligence, interest and loveability, changing the game forever. Yes, friends and neighbours, in August 1994 came the first issue of FourFourTwo.
But that month also heralded the arrival of Jurgen The German (not that one, Kopites). Two years into the Premier League era, change was in the air. The previous summer’s biggest top-flight signings had included Brian Deane to (recent champions) Leeds, Andy Townsend to Villa, Roy Keane to Manchester United, Julian Dicks to Liverpool and Andy Sinton to Sheffield Wednesday.
By contrast, the World Cup summer – along with Sky money and the obvious success of the unquestionably foreign Eric Cantona – provoked something of an import drive. While there were still transfers for doughty names like Mark Draper, Neil Cox and Chris Sutton, Newcastle bought Philippe Albert, while Wednesday hired Dan Petrescu, whose Romania team-mates Ilie Dumitrescu and Gheorghe Popescu would also move to White Hart Lane.
But Klinsmann was undoubtedly the biggest name, if not the biggest fee. He arrived from Monaco after playing for Inter Milan, at a time when Serie A was global football’s richest and sexiest destination; that description would soon move to England, largely because players like Klinsmann did.
After all, Klinsmann was a World Cup winner, the chief attacking weapon of the fearsome (West) Germans... and a diver, whose outrageous flopping-fish over-reaction to Pedro Monzon’s high tackle in the Italia 90 final had ensured the Argentinian the first-ever World Cup final red card. With the English still insisting they were ethically above what was yet to be called simulation – as if serial penalty-winners like Franny Lee had never existed – there were some who saw this as a culture clash too far: European Union membership gone mad.
Clambering aboard the elephant in the room and taking it for a ride like a German mahout, Klinsmann cooked up a cunning plan – and when he scored Spurs’ fourth in an opening-day 4-3 win at Sheffield Wednesday, he celebrated by flinging himself forward and sliding on his stomach toward the touchline, there to be joined by overjoyed team-mates.
After a World Cup marked by notable celebrations – Bebeto and chums rocking the baby, Maradona’s eye-bulging ephedrine haze, Finidi George pretending to be a urinating dog – here was the Premier League’s very own global superstar, a German with a sense of humour, gleefully mocking himself after scoring a crucial goal in a seven-goal thriller. Bliss was it, in that dawn of the Premier League, to be alive.
He did the dive thing again on his home debut, after banging in a scissors kick at the Park Lane end. But Spurs had bigger problems off the pitch: an FA bungs investigation had docked them 12 points, and by the time Alan Sugar’s lawyers quashed it in December, the club had realised that Ossie Ardiles’ apparent 5-0-5 formation might not work.
Reverting from the flash to the old school, Sugar hired pigeon-fancying mullet-wearer Gerry Francis, who promptly lost his first game 4-3. But Klinsmann glided serenely onwards to 30 goals in all competitions, with Tottenham fans particularly enjoying a late equaliser at Highbury and goals home and away against West Ham. Spurs finished seventh, even if their points total was as close to the relegated clubs as it was to second place.
And with that, he was gone again: Bayern Munich were calling, and a clause in his contract allowed him to slip away to Bavaria, where he won pots aplenty. With typical grace, Sugar – who later said that footballers are “scum, total scum. They're bigger scum than journalists... if they weren’t football players, most of them would be in prison” – appeared on TV throwing away a signed Klinsmann shirt and saying he wouldn’t wash his car with it.
Thirty months later, he signed him again. Swallowing his pride – no small task – Sugar, who was deeply unpopular with fans as Spurs languished in the drop zone, invited Klinsi back to London. Nine goals in 15 games later, with Tottenham safe, Klinsi retired and took his 1967 VW Beetle to California.
By then, the Premier League had Gullit, Wenger, Zola, Vieira, Vialli and an ever-widening horizon of possibilities, not to mention a TV deal that doubled the previous pricetag. From 1995 onwards, 12 out of the next 14 winners of the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year Awards were from outside England. The first of these was Jurgen Klinsmann.
