One Foreign Striker Earns His Spurs : Soccer: World Cup winner Jurgen Klinsmann of Germany has settled happily into life in England while playing for Tottenham Hotspur.
What more can we ask of Jurgen Klinsmann? He came to Britain a world-class star with a reputation, which he did not know he had, of being a cheat who dived and feigned claims for penalties.
In half a season, he has charmed and worked his way into our consciousness. We see him now as a decent man, a thundering good athlete and an honest performer. Speak to men who have refereed him and they use an old-fashioned term, a gentleman.
Speak to the editor of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) “Sportsnight” program that, in the new year, plans three profiles of him and the same term comes out.
Kevin Keegan, the Mighty Mouse of Hamburg who performed this feat in reverse--charming the Germans so much so that they forgot their prejudices regarding England’s footballers--put it succinctly: “I admire the way Klinsmann plays, with a smile on his face. Too many players look as if they are having a bad day at the office, they show the strain and the stress, but Jurgen smiles his way through and that’s why the supporters have taken to him.”
Keegan should know. His own faintly messianic aura had followed a path in Germany and, certainly, at Newcastle that makes him, small and dark compared to the tall, blond Klinsmann, something of a sporting brother.
They are champagne players: on a good day, in a good season, they bubble and leave you feeling better for being in their company, although Klinsmann, unless the BBC unveils a great deal that is private, leaves you with the feeling that he is giving everything on the stage and that, off it, he holds back 30 percent for himself.
Brian Barwick, the Sportsnight editor, says the BBC simply followed public acclaim in contracting Klinsmann, but, impressed by his knowledge of four countries, four philosophies, they have allowed him to dictate somewhat the style that the programs will take.
He is indubitably not a Hansen, the master of the sound bite; if you are to do more than scratch the surface of Jurgen Klinsmann, to elicit from him the experiences of playing at the top of the game in Germany, Italy, France and now England, you must give him time.
Perhaps those four countries should be extended to five for, in England, he has been exposed to the metamorphosis of Tottenham Hotspur’s eccentric season. He began by giving the English game a spectacular impetus, scoring seven goals in six league matches in leading the cavalier charge of Osvaldo Ardiles’s brave and beautiful all-out attacking game.
When Alan Sugar, the Tottenham chairman, panicked and did away with Ardiles and when Gerry Francis came across London to stifle instincts and make defense the first priority, Klinsmann found himself plowing a sometimes forlorn furrow up front. He has scored a solitary goal in the past seven games and these days the Tottenham fans rejoice in a hallelujah chorus to a 0-0 score against Crystal Palace.
That, perhaps temporarily, has wiped the smile from Klinsmann’s face, but, after today (December 31) at Coventry, if he is fit, he will enter the tribal urgency of the game on Monday against Arsenal--north London’s version of “die grosse Herausforderung,” the great challenge.
Germans, as the world knows, respond to such things. Klinsmann does so especially. He gave the most stirring, sustained hour of raw athleticism it has been my privilege to watch during the 1990 World Cup in Italy when he was galvanized by the sending-off of his partner, Rudi Voller, in the match against Holland.
His effort was at once frightening and thrilling in its intensity. You have to be either German or Dutch to appreciate the war-like essence of such encounters; it is an international equivalent to a north London derby.
Anyway, mighty in his running, seemingly impervious to pain and heat, taking the effort of two men on his shoulders, Klinsmann would let no ball, no opportunity, go without the ultimate effort to convert it into a goal.
Scoring once and creating a second, he had won that game before Franz Beckenbauer signaled him to the touchline. Wearied but unbowed, scarcely able to put one foot in front of the other, Klinsmann was virtually scooped down the tunnel, his team chief eulogizing: “Never have I seen Jurgen Klinsmann run so much, play so well, take on such responsibility.”
He was 25 and there were fears we had seen his height; but now he is a Londoner, reveling in the ethnic diversity of the capital, pleased to be only politely recognized and not fawned over, as he was in Italy. London stimulates more in him than his last stop, Monte Carlo, which must have seemed like sugar-coating on glamour.
It should be remembered that Alan Sugar’s instincts were perfectly attuned to the game when he came off his yacht, Louisianna, in Monte Carlo to give a 2-million-pound handshake to a player who has quickly melted away British skepticism.
The British public loves Klinsmann’s dressing down, the faded jeans, the anorak and the status symbol in reverse--his precious 1967 VW Beetle. Having learned the irreverent humor of this man who sometimes seems so unlike a German, one can only imagine the same smile lurking as he parks his Beetle in the Tottenham car park. It is football’s equivalent of the catwalk: the Rolls of Sugar, the ice-blue Porsche of Sheringham sharing space with the oldest Beetle in town. Klinsmann will not have it that this is his joke. He sent back the company BMW, asking why he needed such a posh machine.
At the start of the season, having been foolhardy--or brave, depending on your view--he made his home debut at White Hart Lane four days after being concussed at Sheffield Wednesday. His mind was certainly clear. When the ball offered itself to him eight paces from the Everton net, Klinsmann looked around, judiciously assessed the space and time available and then threw himself horizontal to the green sward, scoring with an acrobatic overhead kick when, for many a professional, a simple swipe at the ball would have done. It was his calling card, his trade mark on view to people whom he hoped would become new devotees.
The son of a Stuttgart baker, he shuns agents, has leanings toward Greenpeace and still hankers for peace in which to find some of the lost student days he envies from his three brothers, a depravation that came because skill had shown itself indecently early in his life. Legend has it he was nine when he scored 16 times in a 20-0 victory for his village side, Goppingen, in Schwabia. “I never saw such pride and ambition in a boy,” his first coach, Werner Grass, said. “Jurgen would be in tears if he did not score at least two goals in a match.”
Significantly, Keith Cooper, the Pontypridd referee, has said this season: “I have seen no evidence in this country of Jurgen Klinsmann diving during a match. During play, in which of course he speaks perfect English, I have to say I have found Klinsmann to be a model, a perfect gentleman.”
Yet there is a conundrum: fine and powerful athlete that he is, the scorer of 27 goals in 65 internationals, he can dry up, as he did in France last season, when the motivation leaves him. “My heart,” he has said “is really in the southern parts of Europe.” We are grateful that, for now, he has relented.
