Background and career
Jürgen Klinsmann (German pronunciation: [ˈjʏʁɡn̩ ˈkliːnsman]; born 30 July 1964) is a German professional football manager and former player. He played for several prominent clubs in Europe including VfB Stuttgart, Inter Milan, Monaco, Tottenham Hotspur, and Bayern Munich. He was part of the West German team that won the 1990 FIFA World Cup and the unified German team that won the UEFA Euro 1996. As a manager, Klinsmann managed the German national team to a third-place finish at the 2006 FIFA World Cup and was subsequently coach of a number of other teams including Bundesliga club Bayern Munich and the United States national team. Considered one of Germany's premier strikers during the 1990s, Klinsmann scored in all six major international tournaments he participated in for Germany, from UEFA Euro 1988 to the 1998 FIFA World Cup. In 1995, he came in third in the FIFA World Player of the Year award; in March 2004 he was named in the FIFA 100 list of the "125 Greatest Living Footballers". In 2016, he became the fifth player to be named as honorary captain of Germany.
Klinsmann is one of four sons of master baker Siegfried Klinsmann (died 2005) and his wife Martha (died 2021). At age eight, he began playing for TB Gingen, an amateur football club in Gingen an der Fils. Six months later, he scored 16 goals in a single match for his new club. At age ten, he moved to SC Geislingen. When he was 14 years old, his father bought a bakery in Stuttgart, the state capital. After the family relocated there, Klinsmann continued to play for SC Geislingen, even after he was spotted in a Württemberg youth selection. In 1978, aged 14, he signed a contract with Stuttgarter Kickers, the club where he would turn professional two years later. His parents decided he should first finish his apprenticeship as a baker in their family business, which he completed in 1982.
Klinsmann began his professional career in 1982 at the then-second division side Stuttgarter Kickers. By 1982–83, he was already a regular starter and by the end of the 1983–84 season, he had scored 19 goals for the club. Horst Buhtz, a Stuttgarter Kickers former coach, recalls Klinsmann benefited from intensive training from Horst Allman, who was one of the best sprint coaches in Germany at that time. At the beginning of the new season, he managed to improve his 100 m dash from 11.7 to 11.0 seconds. In 1984, Klinsmann moved to first division rivals VfB Stuttgart. In his first season at the club, he scored 15 goals and was the team's joint top scorer with Karl Allgöwer. Despite his goal scoring efforts, he could not prevent his new club from finishing tenth in the league. During each of the 1985–86 and 1986–87 seasons, he scored 16 goals and reached the 1986 final of the DFB-Pokal, losing against Bayern Munich 2–5, but scoring the last goal of the match. In the 1987–88 season, he scored 19 goals – including a legendary overhead kick against Bayern – and was the Bundesliga's top goalscorer. In 1988, the 24-year-old Klinsmann was named German Footballer of the Year. After reaching the 1988–89 UEFA Cup final with Stuttgart (eventually losing to Diego Maradona's inspired Napoli 5–4 on aggregate), Klinsmann moved to Italian club Inter Milan on a three-year contract, joining two other German internationals, Lothar Matthäus and Andreas Brehme.
In spite of the heavily defensive orientated tactics of head coach Giovanni Trapattoni, Klinsmann scored 13 goals as the Nerazzurri finished third in Serie A. He became one of the most popular foreign players in Italy, mostly because he had learnt Italian and earned himself the respect of the fans with his appearance and language skills. During the next season, Klinsmann won the UEFA Cup with Inter (2–1 on aggregate against Roma) and repeated his previous performance in the league with 14 goals; his contract was extended until 1994. A disastrous 1991–92 season caused all plans to fall through. Inter never managed to gain any momentum under coach Corrado Orrico and finished eighth in the league, with Klinsmann only scoring seven goals and the team being divided and fragmented into groups. It was clear for Klinsmann this would be his last season at the San Siro.
After UEFA Euro 1992, Klinsmann moved to Monaco and catapulted the club to a second-place finish in the league in his first season. After the bribery scandal by Marseille and their subsequent disqualification as league winners, Monaco replaced them in the 1993–94 UEFA Champions League, reaching the semi-final before finally losing to eventual winners Milan. The following season, Monaco only managed a ninth-place finish in the league. Klinsmann, who had missed two months due to a torn ligament, was mostly deployed as a lone-striker and started criticizing the attitude of his teammates. In 1994, he left the club early, with one more year remaining on his contract.
Klinsmann moved to Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League for the 1994–95 season, where the fans and media were very critical of the German because of his reputation as a diver. He was signed by Spurs in July 1994 from Monaco for £2 million. On his debut against Sheffield Wednesday, he scored the winning header and immediately won over fans with his goal celebration by self-deprecatingly diving to the ground. A Guardian journalist who had written an article called "Why I Hate Jürgen Klinsmann", wrote another two months later called "Why I Love Jürgen Klinsmann". Klinsmann went on to win the 1995 Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year. Because of his humour, but also because of his athletic achievements and his combative playing style, Klinsmann quickly became extremely popular in England; over 150,000 of his shirts were sold. He now holds legendary status at Spurs and was inducted into Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Klinsmann scored 20 goals in the 1994–95 season for Spurs and a total of 29 in all competitions, including a late winner against Liverpool in the quarter-final of the FA Cup. He also found the net in the semi-final, but Spurs missed out on a place in the final by losing 4–1 to Everton.
