Matthaeus and MetroStars Need a Parting of the Ways
It was a soccer marriage that was never going to work and now, just after splintering and tearing itself asunder on the proverbial rocks, it is being patched together for a few months simply to save face.
The subject, not surprisingly, is the latest reconciliation between German veteran Lothar Matthaeus and Major League Soccer’s New York/New Jersey MetroStars.
As recently as Wednesday, Matthaeus was heading home in a foul mood and the MetroStars were saying good riddance.
Matthaeus, whose career peaked a decade ago when he led Germany to its 1990 World Cup triumph in Rome, has never fit into the MLS scheme and his abrasive, outspoken nature hasn’t helped matters.
Nor has his nonchalant attitude toward the team and the league.
Most recently, it was a glossy photograph of Matthaeus and his girlfriend sunning themselves on the beach in St. Tropez, France, when he should have been in Germany getting treatment for a back injury that sparked rumors of his imminent release.
“I’m not particularly impressed with the way he is playing and I’m not particularly impressed with the way he’s handling the injury,” Nick Sakiewicz, the MetroStars’ general manager, told the Columbus Dispatch.
“The club doesn’t need me and I don’t need them,” Matthaeus said in an interview with Agence France-Presse. “It is a shame it has not worked out, but I can live without football.”
Then, on Friday, word came that Matthaeus will be staying to honor the final four months of his reported $1-million contract, the one that sees him living in a $10,000-a-month Trump Tower suite in New York, a suite paid for by MLS.
After a 3 1/2-hour meeting in New York that was brokered by MLS Commissioner Don Garber, Matthaeus and Octavio Zambrano, the MetroStars’--and former Galaxy--coach, apparently resolved their differences.
“It’s a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of fabrication and a lot of things taken out of context,” Zambrano said. “Lothar understood I was not the kind of coach to get into a tit-for-tat.”
That’s not what the German defender said a day or two earlier.
“Octavio Zambrano offended me way too much,” he told the German Press Agency. “He changes his mind way too often. The next time he changes his mind would be when I show up at practice. I couldn’t enjoy working together with him.”
Sakiewicz, too, changed his tune. He suggested the media was to blame for the rift between player and club.
“I think there was a lot of incorrect and poor reporting on the whole subject, frankly,” he said Friday, “and it’s actually why I don’t particularly pay too much attention to what’s written in print, but I’d rather have face-to-face meetings and address the issues man-to-man and eye-to-eye.”
Nonsense.
The fact is that the MetroStars are 3-6-1 with Matthaeus in the lineup and 10-1-1 without him. The team leads the Eastern Division by nine points, or three games, with 10 games to play, and Matthaeus’ teammates have said they do not relish the idea of his returning to disrupt the squad again.
“Good,” midfielder Petter Villegas told the Newark Star-Ledger when asked about the possibility of Matthaeus being released. “Now maybe we can get someone who can help us.”
Sakiewicz disputed that, his tone very much confrontational.
“It’s not about the MetroStars doing well without Matthaeus,” he said. “That’s a pretty naive assumption. If any of you know anything about soccer, it’s about the players that we acquired that have contributed to winning, some brilliant coaching and also the players that have been on the roster have helped us win games.”
Questions remain about the nature and seriousness of Matthaeus’ injury, which involves a disk in his back.
Asked Friday when Matthaeus might play again, Sakiewicz’s reply was laced with sarcasm.
“If I knew that or if you could tell me that, then you would be our new head of medical staff,” he said.
But reports from New York quoted Matthaeus, 39, as saying he hoped to be training by early this week and hoped to play in the MLS All-Star game in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday.
And the future?
“The decision about his future was really up to him,” Sakiewicz said. “When it concerns players of great talent and skill, we don’t do stupid things. So releasing Lothar Matthaeus without getting any kind of return for it would not be a smart thing and we don’t do those stupid things.”
Such as signing an over-the-hill player with no motivation other than to pick up some easy money while vacationing in the United States.
QUICK PASSES
Two former Los Angeles Aztec players were in the news last week. Irish star George Best, only recently released after a lengthy hospital stay in London, suffered a relapse in his battle against alcohol addiction and went on a one-night drinking binge. Meanwhile, efforts were being made in Spain to lure Dutch star Johan Cruyff back to Barcelona with the offer of a vice-presidency at the club he coached to great success. But Barcelona’s rules do not allow foreigners to hold seats on the club’s board, something Cruyff finds ironic since the club was founded 100 years ago by a Swiss citizen, Joan Gamper. . . . Striker Oliver Bierhoff will remain captain of Germany’s national team under new Coach Rudi Voeller but fellow forward Ulf Kirsten announced his retirement from the national team. . . . Russia’s soccer federation is asking the government to bankroll its bid to host the European Championship in 2008. This year’s tournament was jointly staged by the Netherlands and Belgium and the 2004 event will be played in Portugal.
Roberto Baggio, 33, said in an interview with Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport that he hopes to regain his place on the Italian national team and to play in the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
